Lorie Konish
Lorie Konish is a personal finance reporter at CNBC who focuses on how policy changes, economic trends and workplace benefits translate into concrete effects on household budgets and retirement security. Her coverage is distinguished by a sustained emphasis on Social Security and older Americans, combining clear explanations of rules and proposals with data, charts and human stories drawn from people navigating the cost of living. She consistently frames complex tax and benefits debates around practical decisions on claiming strategies, savings options and employment later in life.
Social Security and Retirement Policy
Social Security is the center of Konish’s reporting, and she returns to it through stories on cost-of-living adjustments, financing, and reform proposals that intersect with electoral politics. She explains technical issues such as how lifting or eliminating the payroll tax cap would cover a substantial share of the program’s 75‑year solvency gap, using specific percentages to show the scale of proposed changes. Her work on reform plans breaks down survey findings on which benefit cuts or tax increases voters support, and how those preferences vary across battleground Senate races.
She also brings in senior policymakers, including former Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, to lay out the range of options lawmakers need to keep open as they confront Social Security’s funding shortfalls.
Within retirement coverage, Konish tracks how market movements and policy changes affect long‑term savers, from 401(k) participants to retirees living on fixed incomes. She writes about retirement accounts in the context of volatile stock and bond markets, highlighting what swings in assets such as AI‑linked stocks mean for workers’ portfolios and the steps retirement savers can take to manage risk. Her stories on Social Security claiming strategies and Medicare benefits spell out the trade‑offs in delaying benefits, rolling over workplace plans, and understanding what long‑term care costs are and are not covered.
Across these pieces, she uses estimates, survey data and expert commentary to connect policy design with the lived reality of people planning or living through retirement.
Cost of Living, Inflation and Household Budgets
Konish closely follows how inflation and broader economic conditions feed into everyday expenses, and she grounds those macro trends in their impact on benefits and paychecks. Her coverage of Social Security cost‑of‑living adjustments tracks projections for increases in benefits and identifies the categories of prices most responsible for higher COLAs, using visual aids and charts to show how specific spending lines drive changes. In her work on “stagflation,” she explains the combination of slow growth, high inflation and rising unemployment, and then details how that environment affects savings, debt and investment decisions for ordinary households.
The emphasis is on practical implications: how people should think about their money when key prices and interest rates move in conflicting directions.
She also reports on safety‑net programs and food insecurity, writing about millions of people losing SNAP benefits under changes enacted in a Trump‑backed “big beautiful” bill. In that piece, she documents the scale of the benefit loss and solicits stories from individuals struggling to access food assistance, underscoring the human stakes of policy shifts. Her coverage of new emergency savings options under Secure 2.0 explains the rules for workplace‑based savings accounts, including how contributions can be withdrawn free of taxes and penalties in certain circumstances.
Together, these stories show her interest in how legislation and regulation alter both the formal benefits system and the informal coping strategies families use to manage rising costs.
Work, Aging and Financial Security
Konish dedicates significant attention to how older Americans navigate work and money, especially as cost pressures push some back into the labor force.
She reports on “unretiring,” documenting older people who return to work to keep up with the cost of living and outlining the financial and emotional dimensions of that shift. In covering AI’s effect on older workers’ careers, she describes research on how automation and artificial intelligence change job requirements and earnings prospects, and she relays guidance that older workers adopt both AI literacy and stronger soft skills to remain competitive. These stories connect labor‑market dynamics with retirement planning, showing that employment decisions late in life are inseparable from savings levels and benefit structures.
Her treatment of estate planning adds another layer to this focus on aging and caregiving. She writes about the need for thorough estate plans even for households without large fortunes, emphasizing the role of planning in preventing “bad outcomes” such as family disputes or mismanaged caregiving responsibilities. The coverage includes advice from certified financial planners and authors who specialize in financial caregiving, and it links legal and financial preparations to the realities of supporting older relatives.
Across these pieces, Konish situates older adults at the center of her beat, framing work, health care and legacy planning as interlocking components of financial security.
Explainers on Taxes and Policy Changes
Beyond benefits and retirement, Konish produces explainers that break down tax and legislative changes into clear, actionable information. Her guide to a new senior “bonus” deduction under a Trump‑era law sets out what changed and how taxpayers can deduct auto loan interest under the temporary provision, translating legal language into plain terms about eligibility and timing.
She uses similar framing when covering broader tax and policy shifts, connecting new rules to themes of spending less, saving more and investing wisely that define her beat. Earlier in her career she worked as an editor at specialist financial publications and wrote for major newswires, experience that underpins her ability to handle technical material while keeping the focus on the everyday investor and consumer.
Across her body of work, Konish’s defining trait is the way she positions government programs, market forces and workplace benefits within the day‑to‑day decisions of people trying to secure their financial futures. The beat is finance, but the lens is consistently personal: Social Security checks, grocery budgets, emergency savings accounts, second careers and family caregiving. Her stories combine policy detail, numerical analysis and voices from affected individuals, making her coverage a regular reference point for developments at the intersection of retirement, public benefits and household money.
4 more finance journalists.
Abigail Summerville
Abigail Summerville brings a leveraged finance background to her work covering consumer and retail mergers and acquisitions for Reuters. She reports on deal-making and capital markets across food, beverages, spirits, personal care, skincare, bath products and pet food. Her stories focus on transaction terms, ownership stakes, valuation, debt structures and funding sources. She often breaks news on potential sales and strategic reviews before formal announcements. Notable coverage includes Sazerac’s acquisition of Au Vodka, Blackstone’s exploration of a ZO Skin Health sale, CVC’s efforts to sell the parent of Dr Teal’s, and Colgate-Palmolive’s planned divestitures. She also covers consumer IPOs, including Jersey Mike’s and Black Rock Coffee, and co-writes Wall Street market reports. She joined Reuters in 2022 after three years covering leveraged finance and primary debt markets.
Adekunle Agbetiloye
Adekunle Agbetiloye is a senior reporter who connects capital flows, hard numbers and energy transition to the wider African economy. He works at Business Insider Africa, covering how money, technology and energy reshape economic growth, jobs and living conditions. His beat spans the African economy, technology, energy transition, climate change, startups and critical minerals, with a focus on concrete deals and data-led stories. He reports on African startup funding cycles, sovereign wealth funds, billionaire investors, multilateral and private investment programs, energy and power markets, Bitcoin mining, and economic policy choices. His work follows how governments finance spending, manage debt and respond to social pressure, and how sector snapshots and health and development metrics reveal links between macro indicators, corporate strategy and everyday costs.
Aimee Picchi
Aimee Picchi connects Social Security, retirement programs and economic policy directly to the financial security of ordinary Americans, showing how macro decisions hit household budgets. She is associate managing editor for CBS MoneyWatch at CBS News, covering business and personal finance with clear, accessible explanations of complex money issues. Her core beat is Social Security and retirement, interest rates and inflation, and how policy, markets and company strategies affect workers, retirees, savers and investors. She reports on benefit adequacy, looming Social Security cuts, COLA changes, Federal Reserve rate decisions, fuel costs, trade tensions and labor’s share of income, always framing coverage around pocketbook impacts. Her background includes retirement reporting fellowships, prior staff reporting on technology, media and business, an Institutional Investor book on affluent investors, and freelance work for national outlets. She also writes science fiction and fantasy and is a Nebula Award finalist.
Alex Harring
Alex Harring turns fast-moving market, economic and corporate developments into clear pre-market briefings that show what will matter when U.S. trading opens. He is a markets and economics reporter for CNBC’s digital platforms and writes Morning Squawk, a flagship daily newsletter that gives readers five key things to know before the stock market opens. His beat spans financial markets, investing, consumer trends and the U.S. economy, with coverage of central bank decisions, inflation, corporate strategy, sector moves and geopolitical shocks. He focuses on how policy, data and earnings shape equities, interest rates, currencies and investor positioning, linking price action with underlying drivers in real time and in reported features. Harring’s background reporting on corporate news, business and the economy across print, digital, broadcast and streaming informs his habit of connecting markets, companies and geopolitics in one frame.