If you flip to the Today show on most days, you’ll see a familiar face. Jean Chatzky is the expert on everything personal finance, dispensing practical information about how people can get out of financial ruts and mishaps. But when Chatzky first graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and took a position at Working Woman magazine, her goal was never to write about personal finance; instead she was interested in business.
“That’s where I learned about companies. I found that very interesting,” she recalls. “And what I really wanted to do more than anything…was go be a fact-checker at Forbes.”
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After a detour on Wall Street as a business research analyst at Dean Witter Reynolds, Chatzky eventually landed at her dream publication and later joined SmartMoney, where she parlayed her money know-how into regular gigs on Today and SiriusXM’s Oprah & Friends show. But what makes her so well-received is that she previously struggled with her own personal finances. Now, the author and financial whiz opens up about how she created her empire using multiple media channels — and how you can, too.
Did you ever have to take courses in finance to learn more about the technical things, or is all the knowledge you have gained from your personal experience in the industry?
It’s really what I learned on the job. I was an English major in college. I took some marketing classes. I took econ. When I was at Dean Witter, I learned how to read balance sheets, do taxes. SmartMoney, when it launched, launched with the idea that it would be a new and different personal finance magazine and be about the lives of people and not just their mutual funds.
So when did you come to a position when you realized you knew what you were talking about? When did the books come?
It was kind of a natural evolution. When I got to SmartMoney, we had a very aggressive PR effort to just get it off the ground. They launched a segment on the early morning version of the Today show. So they got this segment that was supposed to be once a week. So it just rotated. Whoever had a story to talk about would just go do this segment, and I went one week and they just liked me. I did that for about three years, then I ended up over at Today. And the book and the speaking just elbowed from there. But you know, I just made sure to do my homework whenever I had a story to talk about; I would make sure I knew it cold.
At that time are people saying, “You should just write a book,” or is that something that, as a writer, is that something that you innately wanted to do?
I think I would have eventually come around to it, but no, I got a call from a publisher that said, “You should write a book.” And I got a call from a speaking bureau that said, “You should speak.” So I wish could say that I went out and I got all these things, but…the Today show opened a huge number of doors and, you know, I’m forever grateful. I have worked with different publishers. I have worked with different agents. When it became clear that I was going to be a regular on the Today show, then they said they were going to offer me a contract, I got an agent. When the publishers came around and said, “Let’s write a book,” I got an agent.
When did all of that kind of happen…the books, the speaking. What year?
1997.
A lot of people will call themselves experts nowadays, but you’re obviously the person in everyone’s living room [on TV]…their source for money information. When did you realize you made it as an expert?
I think for me truly understanding that I could stand on my own didn’t really happen until I left SmartMoney magazine. And that wasn’t all that long ago, about four years [ago]. When I left SmartMoney magazine, I remember having a very long drawn-out conversation with my boss at the Today show, because SmartMoney was my home for five years and I understood that I was very much associated with SmartMoney. And I was being offered a great job…and I wanted to take it. But I also wanted to make sure that this was not just the magazine. I had some expertise that was not associated with any magazine I was at.
Jean Chatzky’s tips for making money in media:
1. Diversify your portfolio. “The more well-rounded you are in terms of being able to write everything from a blog post to a long story to shoot your own video and edit it, the more employable you’re going to be.”
2. Watch those pennies. “If you can get a grip on where your money is going, then you have the power to change where you put it and to use it to do whatever you want, whether it’s saving or paying down debt, or funding retirement or renting an apartment.”
3. Write the book on it. “It really helps to write, to put your thoughts down on paper, whether they’re in a book or in a blog or a magazine article. Because then there’s something to talk about.
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Kristen Fischer is the author of Ramen Noodles, Rent and Resumes: An After-College Guide to Life. Visit her at www.kristenfischer.com.
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