Lisa Gerstner

Lisa has spent more than 15 years with Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine, where she has gained a breadth of knowledge on pocketbook issues for consumers. She started with Kiplinger as an American Society of Magazine Editors intern in 2006, was hired as a copy editor in 2007 and later began reporting and writing on a range of personal-finance topics. Her primary areas of coverage:

Retirement, including Social Security claiming strategies, advice on retirement-account savings and withdrawals, and growth of the FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) movement. Consumer credit, including boosting credit scores and monitoring credit reports. For several years, she has compiled the magazine’s annual rankings of the best rewards credit cards, and she regularly updates articles on the best rewards cards for Kiplinger.com.  Consumer banking, including the magazine’s annual rankings of the best banks. Money concerns for millennials, from saving on child-care costs to managing student loans.

Lisa has shared her expertise as a guest with many media outlets around the nation, including the Today Show, CNN, Fox, NPR and Cheddar. 

Lisa was an Honors College student at Ball State University, in Muncie, Ind., and graduated summa cum laude with a degree in magazine journalism and history. During her time as a student, she was editor-in-chief of the campus magazine and an intern at the Indianapolis Business Journal as well as her hometown newspaper, the Wapakoneta Daily News. She received Ball State’s “Graduate of the Last Decade” award in 2014.

A military spouse, Lisa experiences firsthand the financial challenges and opportunities for military families. Born and raised in Ohio, she has moved around the U.S.-from Washington, D.C., to Las Vegas to southern New Mexico–and currently lives in the Philadelphia area with her husband and two sons. When she finds free time, she loves to travel (especially to national parks), hike, try new recipes in the kitchen, and get on the mat to practice yoga.