Jane Bryant Quinn was one of the nation's leading commentators on personal finance. Her policy columns address matters of top concern to citizens, including investor protection, health insurance, Social Security, and the sufficiency of retirement plans. Her current opinions and reporting can be found on her website.
Jane's work includes one of the country's most successful newspaper columns, published twice-weekly and syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group to more than 250 newspapers. She retired it after a 27-year run.She wrote a biweekly column for Newsweek magazine for 30 years, retiring in 2009. She has also written a biweekly column for Bloomberg.com and long-running monthly columns for Woman's Day and Good Housekeeping.
Jane has worked extensively in television. She hosted her own program, a personal-finance series called "Take Charge!," which ran on the Public Broadcasting System. She co-hosted an investment series, "Beyond Wall Street," also for PBS. She worked ten years for CBS News, first on "The CBS Morning News," appearing twice weekly, and then on "The Evening News with Dan Rather." She was a regular on ABC's "The Home Show" and is often a guest on programs such as "Good Morning America" and "The News Hour with Jim Lehrer."
She contributed to the best-selling software program, Quicken Financial Planner, a personalized guide to saving and investing for college and retirement.
In December, 2009, Jane produced the third, fully-updated edition of her best-selling book, "Making the Most of Your Money," named by Consumers Union as the best personal finance book on the market. She retitled it "Making the Most of Your Money NOW," to recognize the profound changes in thinking that occurred after Wall Street's meltdown in 2008. This book, first published in 1991, has been in print and popular ever since. In 2006, Jane wrote "Smart and Simple Financial Strategies for Busy People," her personal list of the best, low-cost ways of saving more money, finding good insurance, planning for college tuition and investing for retirement.
Jane is a frequent speaker for civic, business and educational groups. She graduated magna cum laude, class of 1960, from Middlebury College in Vermont, where she was a member of the Pi Beta Phi Fraternity. In her junior year, she was tapped for Phi Beta Kappa. After college, she worked for "The Insider's Newsletter," a consumer newsletter published by Cowles Communications. She left to co-found "The Business Week Letter," a biweekly newsletter on personal finance published by McGraw-Hill. She began her newspaper column, "Staying Ahead," in 1974 and her Newsweek column in 1979.
Jane has many awards to her credit, including the Emmy and Janus Awards for outstanding coverage of news on television and the Gerald Loeb Award for distinguished lifetime achievement in business and financial journalism. She has also received several honorary degrees. She currently serves on the board of Bloomberg LLP, the financial services company, and GSE Systems, a training company. She has also served on the board of the Jerome Levy Economic Institute of Bard College, the Harvard School of Public Health and her alma mater, Middlebury College. She is a member of he Council on Foreign Relations and The Century Association.
Jane was born in Niagara Falls, NY. Her first marriage ended in divorce. Her second husband, the lawyer David C. Quinn, died in 2004. In 2008, she married Carll Tucker, author of The Bear Went Over the Mountain. She has two children, Matthew Ostrowski and Justin Quinn, and six stepchildren, David P. Quinn, Christopher Quinn, Martha Quinn Tarlow (formerly of MTV), Peter Tucker, Rebecca Tucker and David Tucker.
