Making A Difference

Financial Journalist Who Is
Making a Difference

There are hundreds of journalists who write financial advice columns based on information from experts. But none is more diligent, resourceful, accessible and loyal to her readers than Karin Price Mueller, financial columnist for the Newark (NJ) Star-Ledger and other media.

Karin is noted not only for her three popular columns in New Jersey’s largest newspaper, but for her encyclopedic website (www.KarinPriceMueller.com). This features her own work from the Star-Ledger, Entrepreneur.com and the National Endowment for Financial Education (NEFE) – plus timely financial information from many sources. She’s even built up a “fan club” that followers can “click into and learn “what’s on my mind and what I’m up to that week.”

So great is her impact that the Financial Planning Association (FPA) of New Jersey last month gave her its Distinguished Service Award. (See photo)

Most popular with financial advisors is Karin’s Get With a Plan column in the Star-Ledger. Readers who need guidance provide Karin with basically all the pertinent information an advisor would get at a first meeting. Karin then turns this it over to a carefully-selected financial advisor who works up a plan and sends it back to Karin, who then writes a story with fictitious names complete with charts and graphs.

“It’s a win all the way around, “she said. “The reader gets a free financial plan, the advisor gets free publicity and I get a story.”

To get on Karin’s “to call list,” you first must be a Certified Financial Planner (CFP). She likes the CFP ethical standards.

“After that, I favor those recommended to me by other professionals and those with first-hand knowledge of an advisor’s accomplishments and business practices. Finally, I check out their backgrounds myself to be sure they’re living up to CFP standards.”

Karin said she hears from many readers who have been “burned” by financial professionals.

“It really gets my goat. While there are many, many ethical, moral and fabulous financial advisors, there seems to be just as many who are only out for their own wallets,” she said.

She cited one advisor who, right when the market started to tank, put a couple’s nest egg of $950,000 in a relatively conservative portfolio of mutual funds – knowing the couple was planning to buy a house in a year or so. They lost $227,000. The case is going to arbitration in May.”

Karin was disturbed by news of the FPA and allied groups abandoning efforts to get Congress to establish a definition of financial planning that would have subjected thousands to an oversight board.

“It’s too bad,” she said, “and it’s all the more reason I direct consumers who want comprehensive financial planning advice to CFPs.

“There are plenty of other money pros with lots to offer, but anyone can hang out a shingle and call him-or-herself a financial planner. Consumers deserve to know what they’re getting when they hire a money pro.”

Karin said she is “always looking for new advisors” to whom she can take readers’ problems and questions. They have to be from New Jersey for a Star-Ledger story, but she also writes other outlets. To introduce yourself, email her at kpmuell@optonline.net

Karin’s other two Star-Ledger columns are Bamboozled, where she “puts on the pressure” to make things right for consumers who have been cheated or mistreated and Ask The Biz Brain, where she answers specific reader questions.

She has also hosted and written Money 911, a multimedia series for MSN Money in which Karin helped participants solve their money emergencies. Before writing became her main focus, she was the executive producer of CNBC’s The Money Club, where she led the team that won the network’s first ever Cable ACE Award for Business and Consumer Programming.

FA

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