Insurance / Robin Hartill

Robin Hartill

I’m a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™, personal finance writer, editor and content strategist who delves into the messy, complicated realities of money.

My personal finance education started the hard way. I racked up debt in college, destroyed my credit and spent years trying to rebuild while living on a newspaper reporter’s salary. That experience shaped the way I think about money — and the way I write about it.

Too much personal finance advice assumes people have unlimited time, energy and resources to navigate systems that are anything but simple. The reality is that most people are juggling work, bills, debt, family responsibilities and financial uncertainty all at once. Advice like “Max out your 401(k)” or “Just pay off your credit card every month” ignores the tradeoffs and constraints most people face in the real world.

For the past decade, I’ve worked at the intersection of personal finance journalism, editorial strategy and audience growth. I pitched the concept for The Penny Hoarder’s “Dear Penny” advice column and later became Dear Penny following a companywide restructuring in 2019. Over the next four-and-a-half years, I grew the column to more than 100,000 weekly readers while launching a companion newsletter that grew to roughly 20,000 subscribers.

Since becoming an independent writer and editor in 2023, I’ve written, edited and consulted for brands including NerdWallet, Yahoo Finance, CNET, Capitalize and The Motley Fool, where I also led financial product ratings strategy.

My work focuses on translating complicated financial systems — insurance, taxes, investing, banking, credit and retirement — into language normal people can actually understand. I’m especially interested in the gap between how financial systems are supposed to work and how they actually work for the people navigating them.

I don’t pretend to have all the answers to life’s most difficult money questions. But I try to approach every piece of content I touch with empathy for the reader and whatever financial reality they’re facing.

The Penny Hoarder • 21st January 2023

Could You Have Secret Life Insurance Money Waiting to Be Claimed?

When your loved one dies and you know you’re the beneficiary of their life insurance policy, getting the payout is typically pretty simple. But what if you don’t know whether your family member had a life insurance policy?