Bankrate.com's experts' bios

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Real Estate Adviser Steve McLinden	Boomer Bucks Barbara Whelehan
Debt Adviser Steve R. Bucci	Tax Talk George Saenz
Ask Dr. Don Dr. Don Taylor	Bankruptcy Adviser Justin Harelik
Your Money Outlook Greg McBride	College Money Guru Joseph Hurley, CPA

Real Estate Adviser
Steve McLinden

Steve McLinden has written on virtually all aspects of the real estate world for the past 15 years. His writings have appeared in newspapers around the country on the Scripps-Howard and Knight-Ridder business wire services. A resident of Arlington, Texas, McLinden spent seven years covering real estate for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, winning multiple writing awards. At present, he is a correspondent for National Real Estate Investor, Shopping Centers Today and REO magazine. He has also written for Urban Land and Tierra Grande, a quarterly published by the Texas A & M University Real Estate Center, plus covered real estate beats for business journals in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

McLinden is a native of Peoria, Ill., and a graduate of Bergan High School. He earned a bachelor's degree in communications from Western Illinois University.
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Debt Adviser
Steve R. Bucci

Steve Bucci is the president of Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Southern New England a nonprofit organization serving Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The agency is accredited by the Council on Accreditation and is HUD certified. He is the founder of the Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Rhode Island, developed in the wake of the 1991 Rhode Island banking and credit union crisis. Steve also founded and was the former managing director of the University of Rhode Island Center for Personal Financial Education. The Center is a joint venture with the University of Rhode Island to raise the level of financial literacy through innovative mass-education programs and research.

Bucci was born in Providence and raised in the Riverside section of East Providence. He graduated from East Providence Senior High School and the University of Rhode Island at Kingston, where he received his bachelor's and master's degrees. He and his wife Barbara live in Narragansett.
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Ask Dr. Don
Dr. Don Taylor

Dr. Don Taylor, in addition to answering our readers' questions about personal finance, has a growing corporate consulting practice with experience as a treasurer, consultant, financial planner and debt analyst. He has been an investment professional for nearly 20 years, most recently as the treasurer for a nonprofit organization, where he managed more than $300 million in assets. He is the co-author of a textbook, “Financial Planning: Process and Environment,” which was published in the spring of 2005.

Don holds a doctorate in finance and has earned both master's and bachelor's degrees in finance. A chartered financial analyst since 1990, he is a member of the Association for Investment Management and Research. Don has taught courses in investments and personal finance in the University of Wisconsin system and at Florida Atlantic University. Currently he is an associate professor of finance at The American College, where he teaches financial planning topics in the college's CFP Certification Curriculum.
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Boomer Bucks
Barbara Whelehan

Barbara Mlotek Whelehan has more than 20 years' experience as a journalist, focusing for the last ten years on all aspects of personal finance. As the senior editor of Mutual Funds Magazine from 1995 to 2002, she interviewed hundreds of fund managers and industry analysts as well as dozens of top-level executives at mutual fund firms across the country. She also received a certificate of specialization in financial planning after completing the CFP-board registered program at Nova Southeastern University in South Florida, where she resides.

Whelehan has won numerous writing awards over the years in national, regional and statewide contests. The boomer was born in Chicago and graduated from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign with a bachelor's degree in English and a master's degree in journalism.
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Tax Talk
George Saenz

George Saenz is a certified public accountant living in Miami. With more than 15 years of experience in income, corporate and estate taxes, George brings a real-life perspective to tax problems. He's a member of the Florida and American Institutes of CPAs and the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce.

George earned bachelor's degree in accounting from the University of Florida, and continued graduate studies at Florida International University, where he is a member of the university's advisory board for its Executive Masters of Science in Taxation program. George also is a licensed life insurance agent and a Series 6 Registered Representative.
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Bankruptcy Adviser
Justin Harelik

Justin Harelik has been working with English- and Spanish-speaking clients in the personal finance industry for close to a decade. He has worked as a bankruptcy attorney, credit manager, debt negotiator and student loan adviser. He has applied his financial and legal skills to managing the estates of high net-worth individuals, and to helping improve the financial well-being of hundreds of people living below the poverty line. Currently he is a practicing attorney in Los Angeles.

Harelik earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his law degree from the Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. He spent a year studying in South America, and speaks fluent Spanish.

He is a native of Los Angeles, where he lives with his wife, Felicia. He is also a volunteer Big Brother for the Los Angeles Division of Big Brothers/Big Sisters.
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CollegeMoney Guru
Joseph Hurley, CPA

Joe Hurley is the founder of Savingforcollege.com LLC, and a certified public accountant. His experience in the field of finance dates back to 1978 when he graduated Williams College with degrees in economics and psychology. He began his career with Peat, Marwick, Mitchell (now KPMG), in New York City, and later became tax partner at Bonadio & Co. LLP; an upstate New York accounting firm, where he provided tax-planning services to individuals, corporations, and tax-exempt organizations. Joe retired from that firm in 2004.

Savingforcollege.com LLC began operations in the Spring of 2000 with Joe delving ever deeper into the strange and mystical world of 529 plans. Their improvements came into being with the signing of the 1997 Taxpayer Relief Act, which made major revisions to the rules surrounding 529 plans. Joe immediately recognized the new Section 529 as one of the most remarkable tax provisions in the Internal Revenue Code and worthy of a book-writing effort.

He published, in January 1999, "The Best Way to Save for College --A Complete Guide to 529 Plans"and now spends all his time researching, writing, speaking, and consulting on the topic of 529 plans and other college-planning issues. His articles have appeared in The Journal of Accountancy and The CPA Journal, and he has appeared at hearings, in Washington D.C., to provide comments on the proposed regulations under Section 529. Joe is one of nine individuals recognized by Financial Planning magazine as 2005's "Movers and Shakers."

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