Knuckey, Deborah

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KNUCKEY, Deborah

PERSONAL:

Born in Australia. Education: Monash University, B.A. (economics) and graduate diploma (securities and banking); University of California—Los Angeles, M.B.A. Hobbies and other interests: Travel.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Washington, D.C. Agent—c/o Author Mail, John Wiley and Sons, 605 Third Ave., New York, NY 10158. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Freelance author. McKinsey and Co., management consultant; Andersen Consulting, management consultant; Ketchum, marketing consultant; FinancialFinesse.com, money advice columnist.

MEMBER:

American Society of Journalists and Authors.

AWARDS, HONORS:

IBM marketing prize.

WRITINGS:

The Ms. Spent Money Guide: Get More of What You Want with What You Earn, John Wiley and Sons (New York, NY), 2001.

Conscious Spending for Couples: Seven Skills for Financial Harmony, John Wiley and Sons (New York, NY), 2003.

First book has been translated into Japanese and Chinese.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

A novel.

SIDELIGHTS:

Deborah Knuckey made her way from Australia to the United States in the early 1990s. She began her career as a financial and political journalist at a daily newspaper and returned to writing ten years later. During those ten years she plunged herself into the corporate world, working as a management and marketing consultant for such firms as McKinsey and Co., Ketchum, and Andersen Consulting. Along the way, she gathered enough observations and insight to emerge from the '90s as, according to her online biography, "a personal finance writer, money coach and public speaker." Her two books, The Ms. Spent Money Guide: Get More of What You Want with What You Earn and Conscious Spending for Couples: Seven Skills for Financial Harmony, have been featured on such television programs as Oprah, Bloomberg TV, Good Day New York, and PBS's Moneywise. They have also been featured in such periodicals as USA Today, Working Mother, Working Woman, and Investor's Business Daily.

In 2001 Knuckey published The Ms. Spent Money Guide, which aims to help young professional women (and men) manage their spending and stay out of debt. A contributor to the Debt Advice Bureau Web site declared the text to be "the perfect down-to-earth book for the world's indebted 20-and 30-somethings" and found it to be "written in a friendly coaching style … free from judgement." A Globe Books online reviewer also enjoyed Knuckey's "conversational style" and use of anecdotes, but warned that while it "could be helpful" to the "compulsive spender," the book's tone "may seem obvious and condescending" to "the woman in charge of her life and her spending."

Knuckey followed Ms. Spent up two years later with Conscious Spending for Couples, applying the The Ms. Spent Money Guide financial formula to young couples. A critic from Publishers Weekly described Knuckey's "Conscious Spending" as a "basically sensible and unthreatening" approach that boils down to "only buying what really makes you happy.… [F]ocus on satisfying yourself and you'll never lack motivation."