Welcome to WalletPop! We are your friendly consumer finance site. Our mission is to help you manage your money and understand how the important stories of the day affect your wallet. We know money is serious business, but we also aim to inspire and entertain you. We want to help you navigate today's difficult economic climate.
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Jamie Hammond
Jamie Hammond is vice president and editor in chief of AOL Money & Finance's sites including DailyFinance, WalletPop, BloggingStocks, AOL Small Business and Luxist. Jamie has spent most of his career in online financial media, from Silicon Valley startups to WashingtonPost.com where he served as Business & Technology Editor.
Allan Halprin
Allan Halprin is a 15-year veteran specializing in online media at AOL working as a producer, editor and manager covering personal finance. Prior to AOL he worked at Thomson Financial, CDA Investment Technologies and Kraft Foods in various roles.
Nicole Ridgway
View all Articles »Nicole Ridgway is WalletPop's executive editor. Before joining AOL in 2009, she was the deputy editor of SmartMoney.com, where she oversaw investing, personal finance and small business coverage. Prior to that, Nicole was the deputy chief of reporters for Forbes magazine, where she wrote about everything from venture capital to immigration policy. She is also the author of The Running of the Bulls: Inside the Cutthroat Race from Wharton to Wall Street (Gotham Books, 2005).
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Willy started as a blogger for Weblogs, Inc., before AOL acquired the start-up. Since then, he has served as executive producer for a number of blogs, including Gadling, Autoblog, TVSquad, Cinematical, and others. He has a BA in American Lit from New College and a MPA from Indiana University. His best personal finance tip: "save your money" -- which he learned when he ran out of cash while serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Zambia.
Follow Willy on Twitter.Mitch Lipka
View all Articles »Mitch Lipka is an investigative journalist for consumer issues who formerly wrote for Consumer Reports, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, among other places.
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View all Articles »Jason Cochran covers pop culture and travel. He has worked on staff at Budget Travel and Entertainment Weekly magazines and written regularly for the New York Post, News, Times, and Travel Leisure, among many other publications. He has also covered late night TV for Inside.com, devised questions for Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and written three books for the Pauline Frommer's guide series, winning the Lowell Thomas travel journalism awards' Guide Book of the Year for his work on London.
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Ken Shadford is WalletPop’s video producer, and has been working with internet-based media since 2000. Formerly, he was the Senior Broadcast Director at SmartMoney.com where he created the production division, overseeing both personal finance and Wall Street coverage. Previous to SmartMoney, he was the Head of Production at ForexTV.com.
Aaron Crowe
View all Articles »Aaron Crowe is a former reporter and copy editor at various California newspapers, and was an assistant metro editor at the Contra Costa Times. Besides WalletPop, he can be found online at www.AaronCrowe.net
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View all Articles »Aimee Picchi is a Burlington, Vermont-based writer who covers advertising and marketing for WalletPop. She has written for The Boston Globe, DealFlow Media, Institutional Investor, Vermont Quarterly magazine, the Burlington Free Press and Seven Days. Prior to freelancing, Picchi worked at Bloomberg News for nine years, where she covered media and advertising as a staff writer and contributed to Bloomberg Markets magazine. Picchi also edited the book Cultivating the Affluent II for Institutional Investor, where she worked as the managing editor of a newsletter covering hedge funds and private banking before joining Bloomberg.
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View all Articles »Ann Brenoff is a former editor and nationally syndicated columnist for the Los Angeles Times, where she won a shared Pulitzer Prize. She edits the WalletPop real estate section and blogs incessantly about the recession. She also manages a public relations and marketing company and is working on a book about Malibu, CA., where she lives with her family.
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View all Articles »Beau Brendler is an editor for Consumer Ally on WalletPop.com and writes the WebWatcher column about online scams. He was the executive director of Consumer Reports WebWatch and is an expert on how consumers can be taken advantage of on the web. He is the former editorial director of ABCNews.com and has been quoted as an expert in major publications from coast-to-coast.
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View all Articles »Bonnie McCarthy covers family finance, fashion and lifestyle topics from an expert’s perspective. A former fashion editor for Teen Magazine, California Apparel News, Earnshaw’s Children’s Magazine, and Footwear Plus she has also provided broadcast reports and feature segments for ABC News Now, The Caryl and Marilyn Show, and Good Morning! (UK), among others. She is interested in lifestyle trends and how they affect the family budget.
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View all Articles »Bruce Watson is a features writer for WalletPop, focusing on the political and cultural effects of economic events. A contributor to Military Lessons of the Persian Gulf War, A Chronology of the Cold War at Sea, the Journal of American Philosophy, A Cafe in Space, and the forthcoming Peanut Butter, Gooseberries, and Latkes! He has also worked as a research assistant in the British House of Commons and at the United States Naval Institute.
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View all Articles »Geoff Williams has been a freelance journalist for almost 20 years, specializing in business writing, having written extensively for Entrepreneur magazine for the last 12 years. He also has seen his work published in CNNMoney.com, Consumer Reports, LIFE, Ladies' Home Journal, Entertainment Weekly, National Geographic Kids, BabyTalk, Writer's Digest and numerous other publications. He is also the author of several books, including C.C. Pyle's Amazing Foot Race: The True Story of the 1928 Coast-to-Coast Run Across America and Living Well with Bad Credit.
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View all Articles »Gergana Koleva covers consumer scams and false advertising in the health care industry. She was formerly a personal finance reporter at MarketWatch, and has written for the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Budget Travel.
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View all Articles »Jami Bernard won a Sass Foundation for Medical Research, Isabella Rosanna Memorial Award (2006) and New York Press Club Feature Award for series on breast cancer in Daily News (1997).
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View all Articles »Janean Chun is a former editor at Entrepreneur and is editing sections on taxes, health care, insurance and personal finance gurus.
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View all Articles »Jean Chatzky, award-winning journalist and best-selling author, is the financial editor for NBC's Today, a contributing editor for More magazine, and a columnist for The New York Daily News. She is the author of seven books, including Money 911: Your Most Pressing Money Questions Answered, Your Money Emergencies Solved and her latest, written for kids: Not Your Parents' Money Book: Making, Saving and Spending Your Own Money. Check out Jean's blog at jeanchatzky.com to learn about The Debt Diet.
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View all Articles »Jim Motavalli is the author of six books, including Green Living and Forward Drive, and is a contributor to the New York Times, CBS, NPR's Car Talk, Mother Nature Network and Daily Green.
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View all Articles »Jorgen Wouters writes about scams, recalls and FTC crackdowns against fraudulent companies for Consumer Ally. He was senior producer of Consumer Reports WebWatch, covered international news for ABCNews.com, wrote for McKinsey & Company and was the fly-fishing editor for Gorp.com.
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View all Articles »Josh Smith is a technology expert who covers the intersection of technology and personal finance for WalletPop including websites that save users time and money, consumer electronics, mobile phones, apps and more. He loves to learn about new startups and services that help consumers save money. Josh is also an editor at Notebooks.com where he reviews notebooks and technology and he speaks about personal finance to college students and recent grads about what to expect after graduation.
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View all Articles »Julia Scott is a former columnist with the LA Daily News. She still doesn't regret turning down a 10-year syndication contract and leaving the paper to write a savvy spending blog, BargainBabe.com. Before the LA Daily News, Julia contributed to stories that won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news coverage at the Star-Ledger. Julia writes our coupon and deal section also known as Julia Scott's Bargain Babe.
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View all Articles »Julie Tilsner has more than 25 years of experience as a reporter and editor at major publications, including Business Week and the Los Angeles Times. After writing about the "Information Superhighway" for BW in the early '90s, she migrated to San Francisco herself to work as a "content provider" for several start-ups, including Babycenter.com, during the dot.com boom. it all went bust and she went freelance, writing four books and contributing regularly to a number of women's magazines, including Parenting, American Baby and Redbook. She continues to freelance, and keeps her own blog at www.badhomecooking.com.
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View all Articles »Kelly Phillips Erb focuses on tax and tax-related issues for WalletPop. She is a founding shareholder of The Erb Law Firm, PC, in Philadelphia, PA, where she practices tax law for businesses and families. Kelly authors the popular tax blog, taxgirl.com, cited for the past three years as one of the top 100 legal blogs by the ABA Journal. Kelly has also contributed to Forbes, CNNMoney, Inc. Magazine, Esquire and CBS National Radio.
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View all Articles »Kent Zelas is a Southern California journalist. He's worked as an editor and page designer for the Los Angeles Times and The Orange County Register, and as a blogger and copy editor for AOL Real Estate.
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View all Articles »Laura Heller splits her time between covering the retail and consumer electronics industries. She has been reporting on mass-market retail trends and initiatives since 1995 as a reporter for various business and trade publications including Retailing Today (formerly Discount Store News), Chain Store Age, Consumer Electronics Daily, Drug Store News, Grocery Marketing, Home Channel News, License! Global and PMA Magazine. She's written about home technology for Traditional Home, Better Homes & Gardens and Entertainment Living.
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View all Articles »Linda Doell is an award-winning reporter and editor who spent most of her 20-year career in newspapers including the Allentown Morning Call and has migrated to online news. She covers scams, schemes and recalls.
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View all Articles »Lisa Kaplan Gordon, a veteran journalist, is obsessed with any gadget or gizmo that makes housework easier and faster. You may know her better as WalletPop's "As Seen On TV Reviewer."
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View all Articles »Marlene Alexander is a freelance writer and dollar store diva. She has been published in the Toronto Star newspaper, Modern Woman Magazine and Chicken Soup For The Cat Lover's Soul and is a regular contributor to the e-zines Sensible Life and The Dollar Stretcher.
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View all Articles »Sally Deneen has written about environmental topics for more than two decades. The Green Police column unites her interest in environmental journalism with another love -- consumer reporting. The veteran reporter's work has appeared in dozens of magazines and newspapers as varied as Success, E: The Environmental Magazine, U.S. News & World Report, Columbia Journalism Review, USA Today and South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
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View all Articles »Sarah Gilbert worked as an investment banker for Merrill Lynch and Wachovia, before spending many years on the management teams of dotcom-era startups. She has an MBA from the Wharton School. Today, she is a freelance writer and blogger focusing on retail, social media and the business of food for WalletPop.
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View all Articles »Tara-Nicholle Nelson is a real estate broker, attorney, author of two real estate books and syndicated columnist who focuses on educating and empowering consumers to make life-improving real estate and mortgage decisions (while avoiding the eye-glazing, fetal position-inducing boredom that mortgage articles have been known to create). Tara, who holds an M.A. in Psychology, also speaks and writes about behavioral economics, helping readers understand and transform the way they think about money and make financial decisions.
Tara is regularly quoted as a real estate expert in outlets like the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. As the Consumer Educator for real estate search engine Trulia.com, Tara makes frequent television appearances breaking down complex real estate and mortgage topics into tasty, usable morsels for consumers, on shows like The Today Show, ABC News, MSNBC and Fox News. Tara blogs on real estate and lifestyle design for women at REThinkRealEstate.com.
Tom Barlow
View all Articles »Tom Barlow is a fiction writer, former Membership Director, American Motorcyclist Association, founder/director, The Great Ohio Bicycle Adventure.
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View all Articles »Tom Kraeutler has a nationally syndicated radio show and serves as AOL's home improvement expert.
Subscribe to this writer's RSS.Vera Gibbons
View all Articles »Vera Gibbons is a financial journalist based in New York City. She specializes in writing about women and money for Walletpop.com. Gibbons has written for Inc., SmartMoney, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, cnbc.com, and the New York Times. Today, her writing appears in Real Simple. Gibbons is also a Financial Analyst for MSNBC. Previously, she was a financial contributor with CBS The Early Show, and worked as a correspondent for CNBC’s High Net Worth. Gibbons has appeared regularly on NBC’s Today Show, Weekend Today, Early Today, CNN, CNN Headline News, and the Weather Channel’s Wake Up With Al.
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