A peek behind the curtain with personal finance reporter Chris Taylor

Amanda Coffee is CEO of Coffee Communications and ex-Under Armour, PayPal and eBay.  

Chris Taylor is a senior correspondent at Reuters, having published more than 300 articles ranging from personal finance to CEO travel recommendations. He’s expanded his reporting with a LinkedIn Newsletter, “Cutting Room Floor,” a behind-the-scenes look at his personal finance reporting, as well as contributing to publications such as The Wall Street Journal Buy Side and Fortune magazine. 

Taylor has a skill of making scary financial topics such as investing, ETFs, mutual funds and retirement accounts more approachable by offering real-life examples of how readers of any age can take action to improve their financial health. Taylor posts on LinkedIn when he is looking for real-world sources to complete his reporting. With more than 33,000 followers on LinkedIn, Taylor is active among the media community, sharing journalist moves, promotions and open roles. You’ll find Taylor attending events in New York to connect with his journalism and public relations contacts. 

Let’s get to know him a bit more:

Can you tell us a little bit about what topics and trends in finance and business interest you most?

I’m really drawn to behavioral stuff: Why people do what they do, when it comes to their money. We’re so irrational, but we can’t help it because we’re human and fallible and weak and dumb. It’s been hardwired into us for hundreds of thousands of years, so it’s really hard to fight against our ridiculous instincts.

So any trend or profile that looks at that intersection of money and emotion feels like my sweet spot. I like pieces that use financial narratives to give a glimpse into the broader and deeper human condition that we’re all living through.

Any advice for PR pros that want to work with you?

It never hurts to reach out and make a connection. Odds are that won’t turn into stories right away, especially since the ratio of PR pros to journalists seems 10-1 these days. There’s just no way to keep up with every single pitch, it’s literally impossible, so don’t take it personally if you get silence or if an idea doesn’t pan out.

But just like any connection, it might turn into something down the road. So come at relationships with a spirit of kindness and generosity, trying to help everyone in your network.

You’ve written some fun stories recently from the disappearance of safety deposit boxes to interviewing Fortune 500 executives on their favorite business travel destinations. What story of yours has caused the most conversation online or gone viral?

The stuff that gets people talking is the stuff no one normally wants to admit. For instance, I did one recently on the subject of grief in the workplace. It affects every single one of us, and yet you hardly ever see anybody writing about it in an open and honest fashion.

So right there is plenty of rich material that can help readers in a profound way – how do you deal with personal loss, and still show up at the office? What can your employer or colleagues do to help? How do you allow yourself to feel what you’re feeling, without derailing your career and your finances? 

That one generated a ton of response, because it was like I was allowing people to finally talk about this taboo topic that they’d kept buried deep down.

Can you tell us more about your LinkedIn newsletter?

It’s something I’ve been having fun with for about a year now. It basically opens up the universe of what I can write about: Instead of being limited to whatever my editors want to publish, if I have a quirky idea that doesn’t fit into that box, I can send it out in my newsletter to a few thousand people.

So that might be interviews with CEOs, or book giveaways and conversations with authors, or behind-the-scenes looks at some of my favorite places like the Morgan Library. Plus I had kind of become known on LinkedIn as the “Jobs Guy,” posting new openings in the media and marketing worlds, so every week I collect a bunch of the best ones for those readers who are looking for work. It’s a tough world out there, we have to help each other out!

What are you looking forward to covering more in 2025?

I’m looking forward to writing for a broader range of publications, maybe with some personal essays thrown in, which are kind of fun. Like recently I wrote about running the Boston Marathon at 50, which almost killed me. I think readers enjoy getting a peek behind the curtain once in a while, and knowing what your actual life is like beyond just your articles. 

I think that’s why I have a fairly large social media following on places like LinkedIn or Bluesky. The Internet these days is a whole lot of AI slop, but on my feeds they see there’s a real person, with real opinions, and they connect with that.

You’re known to be an expert in both personal finance and sports. Do your teenage kids come to you for advice on either topic?

No! As any parent of teens knows, there’s a stage when they think they know everything and you know nothing, so that’s where we are right now. Eventually they come around and realize maybe you do know a few things after all.

For instance, for months I’ve been trying to get my oldest kid to open a retirement account, telling him this is the absolute Number One thing he could do for his future self. Doing it now, instead of when he’s 30 or something, will mean literally hundreds of thousands of dollars. He’s not listening to me, though. When he’s 65, he’ll be kicking himself.