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Megan McArdle

Megan McArdle - Megan McArdle is a senior editor for The Atlantic who writes about business and economics. She has worked at three start-ups, a consulting firm, an investment bank, a disaster recovery firm at Ground Zero, and The Economist. She is currently on leave.
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Megan was born and raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and yes, she does enjoy her lattes, as well as the occasional extra-dry skim-milk cappuccino. Her checkered work history includes three start-ups, four years as a technology project manager for a boutique consulting firm, a summer as an associate at an investment bank, and a year spent as sort of an executive copy girl for one of the disaster-recovery firms at Ground Zero � all before the age of 30.

While working at Ground Zero, Megan started Live From the WTC, a blog focused on economics, business, and cooking. She may or may not have been the first major economics blogger, depending on whether we are allowed to throw outlying variables such as Brad Delong out of the set. From there it was but a few steps down the slippery slope to freelance journalism. She has worked in various capacities for The Economist, where she wrote about economics and oversaw the founding of Free Exchange, the magazine's economics blog. She has also maintained her own blog, Asymmetrical Information, which moved to The Atlantic, along with its owner, in August 2007.

Megan holds a bachelor's degree in English literature from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago. After a lifetime as a New Yorker, she now resides in northwest Washington, D.C., where she is still trying to figure out what one does with an apartment larger than 400 square feet.
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Financial Planning

By Megan McArdle

Mar 26 2010, 1:09 PM ET Comment

Maybe my standards for readers of the New York Times is too high, but this "financial tuneup" offered today seems awfully basic.  I mean, fine, save 1% more and rebalance your portfolio, but do you really need to be told to get renter's insurance  and read your tax return?

If you do, dammit, get renter's insurance and read your tax return.  Then look into having a financial guardian appointed for yourself, because you seem to have flunked Bourgeois Basics 101. 

Here's what we're doing this year:  filing our financial records properly, and making sure that every transaction is correctly identified and tagged in Mint, particularly the tax deductible ones.  Paying down debt as quickly as possible.  Mulling whether or not to buy a fixer-upper with a Section 203K loan.  Looking into exciting married-couple things like extra life insurance.

What are you doing to retune your financial future?


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