Emily Braeger
Emily Braeger covers personal finance through the lens of everyday dilemmas, focusing on how money decisions intersect with ethics, relationships and vulnerability as a money reporter at The i paper. Her coverage stands out for treating small, personal choices - from splitting rent to accepting a discount - as serious financial questions rather than lifestyle colour.
Money moral maze and relationship finances
At The i paper, Braeger writes recurring advice-style pieces where readers submit complex personal scenarios and she responds directly as the money reporter. In one column she addresses whether a homeowner should ask a partner to pay rent despite being mortgage-free, unpacking fairness, perceived benefit and how couples can split household costs without resentment. In another she tackles the dilemma of whether to tell a date that he cannot afford to pay for her, focusing on communication, expectations and the emotional fallout of money conversations early in a relationship.
Across these formats, she treats intimacy, trust and practical budgeting as a single topic, using clear recommendations framed by the realities of modern cost pressures.
Everyday consumer dilemmas and ethical spending
Braeger regularly uses small consumer moments to explore wider questions of ethics and financial pressure.
In her piece on whether to accept a low offer on Vinted because the buyer’s daughter is being bullied, she weighs empathy against the seller’s own needs, showing how online marketplaces and social stories complicate simple pricing decisions. Her social callouts seek case studies from millennials who resent their parents for going on holiday or feel angry that their parents’ pensions exceed their incomes, as well as parents who feel guilty about pension income outstripping their children’s earnings, signalling an interest in intergenerational money tensions and how pensions and income inequality play out inside families.
This focus on everyday trade-offs - discounts, side hustles, second-hand platforms and family expectations - gives her money coverage a moral and social dimension beyond straightforward “how to save” service pieces.
Cost of living, financial security and disability bills
Before joining The i paper’s money team in July 2024, Braeger was a consumer editor at the Daily Express, where she covered cost of living issues, bank closures, personal finance and shopping habits alongside disability rights. She led the “End the Disability Bills Crisis” campaign, which focused on the disproportionate costs faced by disabled people and gained recognition as Journalism of the Year at the Sense Awards 2022, with further nominations for major UK journalism awards. That background informs her current work, which treats financial security as more than a savings figure and highlights how structural problems such as rising bills, access to banking and the extra costs of disability shape individual choices. Her writing on feeling secure despite having no savings sits within this broader interest in how security is perceived and constructed when traditional measures like savings balances are out of reach.
Format, tone and audience
Braeger’s recent work at The i paper is predominantly Q&A and “money moral maze” style, with readers presenting dilemmas and her replying in a concise, direct tone.
The pieces are practical - she proposes concrete ways to split bills, handle offers, and talk about money - but they are framed by clear ethical reasoning rather than purely numerical guidance. Her consumer and cost of living background means she combines individual advice with an awareness of systemic pressures, speaking to readers who are already squeezed and looking for fair, realistic arrangements rather than perfect textbook solutions.
Communications around personal finance, consumer products or campaigns touching on relationships, fairness, disability costs or intergenerational money questions sit closest to the subjects she covers most often.
4 more finance journalists.
Abba Ihonde
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Adam Clark
Adam Clark links fast-moving moves in global markets with clear, stock-focused takeaways for investors, combining breaking news with thematic analysis across equities and commodities. He is a reporter at Barron's, covering breaking news and markets, a role he took on in 2022 after five years with Dow Jones Newswires. His beat is how individual stocks, sectors and major indices react to shifts in the economy, monetary policy and corporate strategy, and what those moves mean for portfolios. He covers real-time moves in leading stocks and indices, high-profile names such as Alphabet and Newmont, and themes like technology volatility and gold market resets. He works in fast-turn news and longer market features, drawing on experience as reporter, editor and Insight columnist across print and digital platforms linked to Dow Jones brands.
Alasdair Ferguson
Alasdair Ferguson is a multimedia journalist at The National whose finance reporting is defined by a strong focus on culture, heritage and history. He uses archives, museums and cultural institutions to tell contemporary stories, linking public money and policy to how Scotland understands its past. He covers finance, culture, heritage, sport, arts and civic campaigns, often showing how decisions and events affect daily life and national identity. His work includes pieces on historic conflicts, museum photo releases, lost music, football history, large-scale supporter travel, arts festivals, television industry shifts and grassroots independence campaigns. He reports through news, features and multimedia, including podcast and video interviews. Across formats, he relies on concrete historical material, scholarly research and institutional sources to foreground why discoveries and campaigns matter now.
Alec Whitaker
Alec Whitaker is a senior court reporter for The Westmorland Gazette and also writes for The Mail. He stands out for reporting criminal cases in a tight, court-led way that links offences to fines, bans, compensation and other legal outcomes. His core beat is magistrates’ and crown court hearings, with regular coverage of theft, drugs, motoring offences, harassment, stalking and robbery. He reports on how the justice system turns behaviour into sentences and financial penalties, from short theft cases to serious drug charges. His pieces give the charge, the hearing, the pleas and the final order in plain terms. He also covers inquests and other court proceedings, and his work has included reporting for The Mail, The Westmorland Gazette and the North West Evening Mail.