Fiscal fitness -- meet Michelle Singletary

It is no secret that I dig the WaPo's outstanding personal finance columnist. The Washingtonian does a brief profile of her, "Big Mama Taught Her Well."

Also, if you're not reading her live chat archive over at the WaPo, get over there are do so. She really gets chat as a medium in which a columnist can extend their brand and build their audience -- and she dispenses handy advice and reality checks.

Comments

[megan]

I don't really like her much -- I hate her opinions on marriage and I think her opinion on "good debt" is actually really bad advice for a lot of people. She's good at reality checking people on getting out of their "bad debt," but totally unreasonable about school/house debt and paying it down v. saving for retirement.

[Lisa]

Megan, I think it's interesting you bring up the marriage thing. I like that she lays out her stance early on (i.e. with the mixing of finances) and backs up why she believes that way.

(ALSO -- Thank you for bringing that up because you've now just inspired June's topic!)

But yeah, you're not the first person who has raised the objections about her stance on debt. I can see where you're coming from there.

[mimsi]

I really like her columns and her chats. I might not always agree with everything she says, but overall I think it's good advice. I look at it from a perspective that her advice is based on protecting yourself from financial harm and when you can, it's nice to have some legal weight behind it - hence the marriage viewpoint. Of course, I bought a house with my boyfriend, so I don't always follow it. But I do like her points that if you're in a committed relationship, the money is "ours" not "mine" or "yours". I have a lot of friends that think that way and it makes no sense to me.

[megan]

I meant to also say that I really do like her columns and chats, I just strongly disagree with a lot of her advice. Her advice is rarely tailored to the individual, for example, it's pretty much always one of her few rules.

I agree with you that she lays out her stance clearly and early on; it's just a stance that I disagree with. To me, it's super tinged with religious tones and, again, it's completely "one size fits all" and not ever tailored to the person's particular circumstances.

I think if I were religious, or maybe if I hadn't grown up in a house where my parents kept (still keep) separate accounts for about 30 years, I'd believe her advice was good more often.