Melissa Phipps is a financial journalist with 15 years of experience covering retirement planning and related investing and money management topics.
Melissa is a writer and editor who has covered business, personal finance and charitable giving for many consumer and trade magazines and websites, including: Worth, The American Lawyer; Robb Report; Inc; Institutional Investor; iVillage.com; Today.com; Barnard; Budget Living; Bust; GeneralAssemb.ly; Glamour; Financial Advisor; Financial Planning; and Bank Investment Marketing. She has worked on custom publications for Principal Financial, MetLife, Chrysler, Jeep, Merrill Lynch, Charles Schwab and Citigroup Wealth Management. As a Senior Writer for Worth magazine, she created for four years running the popular annual list and cover article, The 250 Best Financial Advisors.
Melissa has a BA degree in English from the University of California at Berkeley.
As someone who has written about everything from the simplest to the most complicated investments, my goal is to make money interesting and easy-to-understand for everyone. Regardless of how much you have today, you can have more in the future. You are never too young to start—in fact, the younger you are, the better.
When I'm not writing about it, I'm learning about retirement planning from personal experience. I am a working mother who manages the family finances, and I have a (very) small business. I struggle to keep my accounts in line, I have to prod myself regularly to contribute a few dollars more and it's hard for me to keep restraint when the markets start to tank. Worse, when they go up, I wonder if my investments are doing enough for me. But my rational self knows that planning for retirement is about intelligence plus patience. Both are important in equal measure.