Website Profile: Amanda Steinberg, Daily Worth

Amanda Steinberg, the founder and CEO of Daily Worth, does not like the term “financial literacy.” She much prefers “financial engagement,” and her website is dedicated to fostering an online community of “smart, educated and ambitious working women” who have never really learned about money management. Steinberg and her creative team of seasoned journalists and financial writers, as well as ordinary women, who share their personal experiences with money issues, seek to give readers the tools and hard-earned life lessons to generate wealth.

The site, which launched in January 2009 and has 130,000 subscribers, was informed by Steinberg’s own financial journey.  “I was raised by a single mom who instilled in me the idea that I should strive to be financially independent and create my own wealth,” she told Millionaire Corner. “Throughout my 20s I became a very successful entrepreneur in the website consulting sector, but I also developed a fabulous spending habit to match (my success). I operated under the assumption that I could always make more money.  I bought too big of a house and built a life that was quite expensive. When I was 30 I looked at how at times my husband and I were struggling to make our mortgage payments and I wondered how could I make so much money but not be able to save any of it. It triggered for me (the realization) that there was perhaps a lot about money management that I did not understand, like basic math.”

Women, Steinberg said, face unique financial challenges. “We earn and retire with significantly less money than men,” she said. “My initial concept for the site was more of a motivational publication to address issues of self-worth and confidence. It was (in the beginning) New Agey. But we had the foresight to survey our then-500 readers, who told us that site was kind of useful, but it wasn’t very practical for them.”

A watershed moment for Daily Worth came with a piece Steinberg wrote “My Weight Watchers Inspired Money Diet,” which went viral. A featured blurb on the Self magazine site “flooded us with traffic,” Steinberg said. She recruited the journalist who wrote the piece, MP Dunleavey, a New York Times columnist, to freelance for the site. She now serves as the editor-in-chief.

As the site has evolved, Steinberg said, it has tackled the depth and breadth of financial challenges women face. “Just the fact that the divorce rate is 50 percent,” she said. “Whenever we write anything on divorce and the transition to single motherhood, the site erupts with responses.  There are also so many unmarried women who don’t follow traditional constructs. That’s a greater phenomenon than 15 years ago.  There are tens of millions of women who are the CFOs of their households and yet they weren’t necessarily raised (for that role). There are women who don’t know where to start when it comes to investing. It can be an intimidating environment and people become kind of paralyzed by it.” Longevity is another huge issue. We are sorely underinvested in that regard.”

Daily Worth’s daily features and blogs are geared toward helping women take charge of their financial situations. “Half of our readers say they struggle to keep on a budget or don’t have one,” Steinberg said. “According to the National Foundation for Credit Counseling, eight out of 10 women give themselves a grade of C or less when it comes to their understanding basic money management concepts.”

This feedback was invaluable in further shaping the site’s editorial direction. “(I was surprised) to the extent) to which a large portion of our audience really live in fear from reading story after story (in the news) about how hard it is to make ends meet in America. (In the beginning) we were doing more advanced investing pieces. A lot of readers said, ‘This is completely irrelevant to me. I can hardly make ends meet. Why am I going to read about dollar-cost averaging?’”

Daily Worth subscribers receive a daily email driving them to the site for articles and posts on basic topics of budgeting, earning, saving, spending, and investing. A representative post, Steinberg said, is the “Save-to-Spend Budget”, which advises how earnings should be allocated.

The site’s most popular feature, Steinberg said, is Money Fix, for which readers chronicle a major financial change in their life. Five applicants selected out of thousands of submissions are paid $200. “We try to choose a diverse set of experiences and ages,” Steinberg said. “from a younger woman just getting started to an under-earning woman of 50 restarting her career. We link them up with a national expert and they get free coaching. Then they write the piece for us. It’s like reality television, but substantive.”

Asset Class is a newer twice-a-week feature for women who are interested in investing. A third online newsletter devoted to entrepreneurs is scheduled to debut in the fall.

The pervasiveness of social media, Steinberg noted, has added a new level of engagement to the site’s community. “It has allowed our readers to connect with others.They feel they are on a journey together.”

As for Steinberg herself, how has her own financial engagement changed while developing the site? “I’ve cut my spending by 30 percent,” she enthused, “and I’m saving more money than ever before. The critical things I (recommend) is active budgeting.  You save more and spend less because you are focused on it. You may not meet your perfect measures, but you’re doing way more than what you were doing.”