Karen Haywood Queen

About the author

“I have always been passionate about saving money. My parents still remember me as a young teenager walking away from a street vendor, who chased me down to offer me a better price.

“When my son was three and wanted me to spend a quarter on a toy from a machine at the grocery store, I told him that if we spent that quarter, the toy would soon break. But if he saved that quarter, it eventually would be worth a quarter and a nickel. He was hooked.” – Karen Haywood Queen

Expertise

Personal finance, cybersecurity, business, technology

Education

Journalism and English degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Music education degree from Virginia Commonwealth University

Highlights

• Covers an array of personal finance topics for various publications
• Author of a book about teaching children to save money
• Has a perfect credit score of 850

Experience

Karen Haywood Queen is a personal finance reporter who has worked as a government and business reporter at The Chapel Hill Newspaper and The Salisbury Post and as a business reporter for the Associated Press.

Karen writes about debt and money management, debt collectors, identity theft, insurance, cybersecurity and estate planning for a variety of publications. She also writes about how artificial intelligence can help protect your identity and offer you better rewards.

“I have written personal accounts of mistakes that caused my credit score to briefly dip into the 600s (not my fault, I promise), how a quick call to my credit card issuer saved me $300, how I successfully resisted the siren call of convenience checks and how changing our travel dates for a Christmas vacation allowed us to spend two weeks in the Bahamas for less than the cost of one week (hint, don’t try to travel on the weekend before Christmas),” Karen says.

Karen’s book, “Meanest Mommy in the Universe,” will be published in May 2021. It focuses on raising independent children with a side benefit of saving money along the way. In recent years, Karen has become “hooked” on gaining the most rewards benefit from her credit cards. She says credit card companies should welcome her as a customer: as of this writing, her credit score is a perfect 850.