About

Bio

Matt began his career as a radio journalist, with his work featured on National Public Radio, the NBC Radio Network, and several other networks. His reporting earned national awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and United Press International.

A Prodigal Son experience he went through in his mid 20s completely changed the direction of his life and career.

Today, Matt is a full-time biblical money management writer and speaker, serving as Managing Editor at Sound Mind Investing while speaking at churches, universities, and other venues throughout the country. He is the author of Trusted: Preparing Your Kids for a Lifetime of God-Honoring Money Management, which was published by Focus on the Family and Tyndale House in April 2023. He also wrote four books that were published by NavPress, including the re-released Money and Marriage. Matt is the host or co-host of three video-based small group studies. He has been quoted in USA TODAY, U.S. News and World Report, the Chicago Tribune, and Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine, has written for ChristianityToday.com, and has been a guest on WGN-TV and several nationally syndicated radio talk shows.

Matt holds a Master’s degree in Interdisciplinary Studies from DePaul University, where he wrote a thesis about the emergence of America’s consumer culture and its influence on people’s beliefs and behaviors.

Matt and his family live in the Louisville area. He and his wife, Jude, are the parents of three children — two in college and one in high school.

Story

Going back to my paper route days, I’ve always worked hard at earning money. As for managing money, I didn’t develop much of an interest in that until I turned a $60,000 inheritance into $20,000 of credit card debt!

I received the inheritance from an uncle when I was 25 years old, and used it to create “Links Review,” a newsletter centered on my passions for golf and travel. Once a month, I would visit some great golf vacation destination and review the area’s best courses. While the newsletter enabled me to tee it up on amazing courses from northern California to southern Spain, it suffered from one fairly important problem: very few subscribers. Blind to my financial situation and increasingly acclimated to the life I was living, I just kept going. Two years after receiving the inheritance, I woke up to the hard reality that I had dug myself deeply into debt.

That experience, including six humbling months of living in my parents’ basement and over four years of paying off my debts, completely changed my life. For starters, it prompted me to reevaluate the overall direction of my life. Ultimately, that path led me to turn a casual interest in spiritual matters into a committed Christian faith. It also forced me to face the fact that I had a lot to learn about money. So I began to study, and haven’t stopped.

Early in my new journey, I began volunteering with Good $ense, a national stewardship ministry that was founded at Willow Creek Community Church, one of the nation’s largest interdenominational churches. While serving in Good $ense, I counseled many people one-on-one and taught countless workshops.

In 2005, with the amazing support of my adventurous wife, I left a lucrative corporate job to pursue a long-held dream of writing and speaking about money full-time. Doing so is one of my greatest joys.

Philosophy

Following the conventional wisdom about money has left a lot of us buried in bills and feeling some stress. Our homes and TV screens may have grown, but our joy has not.

Some people look at the heavy debt loads and light savings accounts that are all too common in our culture and conclude that people have simply stretched too far. They need to rein themselves in, tighten the belt, cut back. At first glance, that seems about right.

But it isn’t right at all. The issue is not that we’ve stretched too far; it’s that we’ve settled for too little.

Our culture would have us believe we’re consumers and the path toward happiness is marked “more” — more striving, more money, more stuff. But looking to what we own for our ultimate happiness leaves us physically worn out, financially tapped out, and thinking there must be a better way.

There is a better way. It begins with an understanding that we were not made to be consumers. Discovering our true identity and purpose is the essential first step toward using money in a ways that are productive, meaningful, and deeply satisfying.

That’s what my work is all about.