My Mother’s Money – Beth Pinsker

Dec 8, 2025

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What happens when a financial columnist and CFP® professional suddenly becomes her mother’s caregiver? Beth Pinsker discovered that her expertise couldn’t prepare her for the relentless tenacity required to navigate Medicare mazes, fight for proper care, and manage the details of her mother’s financial life. In My Mother’s Money , a comprehensive practical and detailed resource, she shares the street-smart lessons that only come from boots-on-the-ground caregiving experience.

In this conversation, you’ll learn:

Why financial caregiving requires perseverance to advocate effectively for your loved ones
The critical difference between big-picture finances and knowing the granular details that matter
How Medicare decisions made at age 65 can create enormous consequences for caregivers years later
Why humanizing your loved one to healthcare providers changes the quality of care they recei
Why “stuff” is such a complicated issue and how to prepare your own estate realistically

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Bio

Beth Pinsker is a financial-planning columnist at MarketWatch and has been a Certified Financial Planner™ since 2018.

She won a SABEW Best in Business award in 2023 for commentary for a series of columns about caring for her mother. She turned those into a book, “My Mother’s Money: A Guide to Financial Caregiving” (Crown Currency, November 2025).

Beth was previously the launch Money Editor for Buy Side from WSJ, providing advice and service on anything having to do with how people handle their money. Prior to that, she was a personal finance columnist and editor at Reuters for eight years. She covered all aspects of financial planning and decision-making, such as retirement strategies, selecting employee benefits, and saving money. In 2018, she was part of a team that won a Front Page award for Live Online Video from the Newswomen’s Club of New York.

Beth worked at Fidelity during the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, where she was an Editorial Director handling coverage of taxes and wealth strategies. She also was the editor of Walletpop.com, a personal finance website owned by AOL that launched in 2008 in the midst of the Great Recession and focused on frugality, budgeting and finding the best deals.

Beth spent the first part of her career as a film critic and entertainment business reporter, writing for many publications, such as Entertainment Weekly, The Dallas Morning News, The Independent Film & Video Monthly, Variety and the New York Times. She had brief stints at “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” and was an intern for “Late Night with David Letterman.”

Beth has a B.A. in English from Harvard University. She is the mother of two humans and one dog and lives in Brooklyn.

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