Susan Tompor
Susan Tompor explains how complex money rules, economic shifts and financial traps show up in the household budget. Her coverage centers on personal finance for working families and retirees, with a consistent focus on scams, hidden fees and policy changes that quietly reshape everyday cash flow. She writes as a guide through consumer-facing problems in the financial system, translating technical rules into specific steps and clear warnings.
Personal finance with a consumer-protection lens
Tompor’s columns for the Detroit Free Press focus on the intersection of household finances and consumer risk, often built around detailed case examples and practical advice. She regularly breaks down schemes that target ordinary savers and shoppers, such as “pump and dump” stock pitches that move from social media ads to encrypted messaging apps, and phishing scams disguised as party invitations or online offers. In these pieces, she walks through how the fraud unfolds, what signals to look for, and which official channels to use to report or recover from scams, frequently listing hotlines, websites and specific agencies involved.
Her coverage of veterans receiving phony postcards promising “savings” on benefits takes the same approach, spelling out the mechanics of the scam and emphasizing how to verify information with trusted sources rather than unsolicited contacts.
Taxes, benefits and new rules that change monthly budgets
Tax policy and benefit changes are a recurring core of Tompor’s beat, and she treats them as practical questions of how much money people keep or lose.
She has written on new IRS forms, such as Schedule 1‑A, by mapping out which deductions it unlocks, who qualifies and how income thresholds phase out potential savings. Her coverage of an overtime tax break similarly walks through income limits, phase‑out formulas and the point at which the deduction disappears, all with an eye on what a filer might expect in the refund they count on. When higher inflation affects Social Security cost‑of‑living adjustments, she frames the issue in terms of how much extra a benefit check could increase each month, connecting macroeconomic trends to specific dollar changes in household income.
Across this work, she spends significant time translating jargon and formulas into plain numbers and clarity about what taxpayers need to do or watch.
Retirement savings, long‑term planning and new account structures
Tompor frequently covers retirement savings, both through traditional vehicles and new policy-driven accounts. Her reporting on 401(k) savers tracks contribution limits, catch‑up provisions and how rising markets push average balances to record levels, emphasizing what the new ceilings mean for workers trying to build retirement security.
She also devotes attention to long‑term savings opportunities embedded in new programs, such as government-seeded accounts for children that later convert into retirement vehicles. In those pieces, she quantifies potential growth over decades at different contribution levels, explains how the accounts are structured and invested, and outlines the rules for accessing funds once a child becomes an adult.
Her work on unclaimed savings bonds and other “lost” assets underscores the same theme: persistent, detailed reporting on how families can find overlooked money, navigate Treasury forms and interact with institutions to reclaim funds they may not realize they own.
Banking glitches, retail problems and the friction in everyday money
Beyond policy and scams, Tompor pays close attention to the practical breakdowns that disrupt personal finances. She has covered merger-related banking glitches that leave customers frustrated with account problems, explaining what went wrong and how those issues can affect bill payments, deposits and day‑to‑day access to cash. Retail and e‑commerce problems also surface in her work, including odd system errors that cause online shoppers to see duplicate orders or charges, and the downstream annoyance and risk those glitches create.
In these stories, she combines consumer anecdotes with clear steps for documenting issues, contacting companies and seeking remedies, keeping the focus on how real people experience financial friction rather than on institutional messaging.
Economic shocks and the household-level impact
Tompor’s longer-running body of work includes extensive coverage of major economic shocks and their consequences for ordinary workers and retirees.
She has written about the credit crisis, the Great Recession and Detroit’s municipal bankruptcy with an emphasis on pensions, retirement security and how sudden downturns alter financial plans. More recently, she has linked labor disputes and industrial upheaval, such as auto industry strikes, to changes in household finances, student loan burdens and tax system delays. Her reporting consistently connects large-scale economic events to concrete questions - how much income is at risk, how benefits might change, and what options people have to protect themselves or adjust their plans.
Across these themes, Tompor writes as a personal finance columnist rooted in consumer experience, disciplined about the math and procedures behind money decisions, and attentive to the ways that scams, policy tweaks and corporate systems can erode financial stability long before headlines catch up.
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.