Brian O'Connor

Brian O’Connor is the award-winning personal finance columnist for The Detroit News, and author of “The $1,000 Challenge: How One Family Slashed Its Budget Without Moving Under a Bridge or Living on Government Cheese” from Portfolio-Penguin. In addition to garnering rave reviews, “The $1,000 Challenge” was named Best Money Management Book of the Year by The Institute for Financial Literacy.

O’Connor’s nationally syndicated “Funny Money” column humorously chronicles the financial implications of everything from potty training and the Pregnancy Industrial Complex to tax avoidance and the shadowy international baking cabal that forces consumers to buy unnecessary hot dog buns. His award-winning market commentary includes the observation that, if Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen were to spontaneously combust, “The stock market will undoubtedly go down, unless it goes up or stays the same.”

O’Connor has won three humor-writing awards from the National Society of Newspaper columnists and is a two-time Best in Business winner for his column, as well as an awarded finalist in the Scripps Howard National Journalism Awards and winner of the Christopher J. Welles Memorial Prize from Columbia University. His work has been featured in The Christian Science Monitor, Martha Stewart Living and The Wall Street Journal.

O’Connor holds a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts from Sarah Lawrence College, and earned a master’s of science in journalism at Columbia University, where he was a 2001 Knight-Bagehot Fellow in Economics and Business. Before joining The News, O’Connor was the founding managing editor of Bankrate.com, the Web’s top personal finance site. A native of the Motor City, he is married with one son and lives in Sylvan Lake.

For more of his work, visit www.funnymoneyblog.com.