4 Tips for Personal Finance Success from President Obama

On June 8, 2011, the White House invited 23 journalists from leading personal-finance sites for a first-of-its-kind summit.

(Image credit: Official White House photo by Pete Souza)

On June 8, 2011, the White House invited 23 journalists from leading personal-finance sites for a first-of-its-kind summit. The goal: translate important issues for the economy out of Washington-speak and into practical, pocketbook terms that everyday Americans who get their financial information online can understand.

Kiplinger.com asked President Barack Obama to reveal the one piece of personal financial advice that he had found most useful in his own life -- a question rarely, if ever, asked of presidents. Turns out the President has four pieces of financial advice that we at Kiplinger espouse all the time.

(Editor's Note: This slide show was originally published in June 2011. We like to refeature it on occasion for insight into the President's approach to money management. So, too, do other sites such as Business Insider, whose Jan. 17, 2013 article looked back at Kiplinger's personal question for President Obama.)

Douglas Harbrecht
New Media Director, Kiplinger.com
Harbrecht joined Kiplinger in March 2006 from BusinessWeek.com, where he served as senior and executive editor. Prior to that, he worked in the Washington bureau of the magazine, now BloombergBusinessweek, covering policy, politics and economics. He holds a BA degree from Binghamton University and an MA in journalism from the University of Missouri. He was 1998 President of the National Press Club and a 2010 Kiplinger fellow in social media study at Ohio State University.