Chuck Jaffe

Chuck Jaffe, host of Money Life, is a veteran financial journalist and nationally syndicated financial columnist whose work appears in newspapers from coast to coast.

Chuck started Money Life in 2012, but originally hosted a show by the same name on WBIX, AM-1060 in Boston in the early 2000s until the station closed. Subsequent to that, he hosted “Your Money,” another regional radio show for about two years, and did podcasts for MarketWatch.com, where he was senior columnist.

Chuck has followed the rich journalistic history of “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable” in the financial services world. For a decade, he wrote the “Stupid Investment of the Week” column for MarketWatch, highlighting the conditions and characteristics that made all types of securities less than ideal for average investors, uncovering in the process a rogues’ gallery of dreadful issues and bad ideas. He is also known for terrorizing the mutual fund industry with his annual “Lump of Coal Awards,” bestowed on entities in the mutual fund world for action, conduct, performance or attitude that is “bumbling, offensive, disingenuous, reprehensible or just plain stupid.”

Chuck has been named to MutualFundWire’s list of the 40 Most Influential People in Fund Distribution, and was the first journalist to make the list. Over the course of his career, he has won numerous awards for business and personal finance journalism.

He is the author of three books: “Getting Started In Finding a Financial Advisor” (John Wiley & Sons), “The Right Way to Hire Financial Help” (The MIT Press) and “Chuck Jaffe’s Lifetime Guide to Mutual Funds” (Perseus Books). His two books on working with financial advisers have made him a rare critical voice in the financial-planning business.

Chuck is a past president of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, a group representing more than 3,000 business journalists nationwide, and he has long been an outspoken critic of the business media.

Aside from his work on money and investing, Chuck is a columnist for New England Lacrosse Journal, has been the play-by-play voice on professional and international lacrosse broadcasts, officiates women’s lacrosse games throughout the spring and summer, and is co-owner of the Boston Box Lacrosse League; he continues playing lacrosse himself when his overweight and aching body allows it. In 2006, he was named America’s “most innovative youth coach” by U.S. Lacrosse, the sport’s national governing body.

Beyond his column, Chuck writes regularly for the Wall Street Journal and for other business publications and web sites. Prior to his 14 years at MarketWatch, he was the personal finance and mutual funds columnist at The Boston Globe for nine years. In 2017, he spent roughly six months running editorial operations at RagingBull.com – a site run by traders and for traders -- establishing the site’s editorial content.

Chuck moved to Boston to work at the Globe after six years as business editor and columnist at The Morning Call in Allentown, Pa. His business journalism career also includes Florida stops at the St. Petersburg Times and the Bradenton Herald.

Chuck continues to live in the Boston area, with two very old cats that have sensitive stomachs, and with his energetic golden retriever Freo, who sleeps under Chuck’s desk and whose flatulence issues sometimes explain Chuck’s demeanor.

You can follow him on Twitter @ChuckJaffe, or @MoneyLifeShowor, depending on your sporting interests, @BostonBoxLax.