Paul Conley is a journalist with more than 25 years of experience -- much of it covering Wall Street and writing about personal finance. He's worked for such giants of the business press as Knight-Ridder Financial, the Economist Group, CNNMoney and Bloomberg News.
Paul is also a husband, father, resident of Tribeca in New York City, a native of South Boston, Ma., a veteran of the U.S. Army, owner of B2B publishing firm Paul Conley Consulting, a practitioner of Filipino martial arts and a pretty good dancer.
Experience:
Paul Conley has covered Wall Street and the world of bonds for much of his journalism career. He has managed a staff for CNNMoney, helping produce multimedia stories about investing and driving coverage of global finance markets; he served as the editor of Bloomberg's public finance team, assigning and editing stories about the muni bond market; and worked as a contributing editor for SmartBrief, covering the investment world for a newsletter distributed by SIFMA, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.
Of particular interest to About.com users -- Paul was once producer of About's money sites, which covered the world of investing and personal finance.
From Paul Conley:
My introduction to the world of bonds and investing came at an unusual time in the markets. I graduated from high school in the late 1970s, a tough time in the financial world. The U.S. economy was going through an awful combination of high inflation, high interest rates and high taxes. There seemed little chance that the nation would ever again be prosperous. And none of my peers believed that financial security was possible for our generation.
But in my second year of college, an ambitious and bright young guy moved in down the hall from me. And one night, over beers, he explained to me that he was actually making money by going to college. What he had done was take out a student loan (at a subsidized low rate), enroll in the minimum number of classes needed to remain eligible for loans, and then invest the balance in a bond fund (which was paying an extraordinarily high rate.)
I started reading The Wall Street Journal the next day.
And I've never looked back.
References:
- Paul Conley Consulting
I make my living as a consultant to business-to-business publishers. - Paul Conley's blog on trade journalism
I'm also a blogger in my other life -- writing about the world of the B2B press. - About.com back in March of 2000
This is what About.com looked like when I ran the "money" channels, including finance/investing.