Houston Chronicle personal finance columnist leaves for non-profit

Personal finance columnist Shannon Buggs has left the Houston Chronicle and is running Meta-Four Houston, the youth spoken-word poetry nonprofit she founded.

In an e-mail, Buggs told Talking Biz News, “After more than 16 years in daily newspaper journalism, I’m keeping my options open.”

In her goodbye column earlier this week, Buggs wrote, “For more than a decade, I’ve traveled with you on an extended tour of the world of personal finance, which ends with today’s column.

“The journey started with Your Money, the column I wrote for six years with the goal of giving you the information you needed to make reasoned and sound choices about the money you made, saved and invested.

“What I wrote, I lived — having the same talks about money with my husband that I encouraged you to have with your significant other, paying off credit cards and student loans, refinancing mortgages, rebalancing portfolios and saving to buy new black boots during the post-holiday sales.

“And like you, I stumbled — spending way too much on nursery furniture when my first child was born and failing to keep track of medical expenses that got out of hand. Every error served as a reminder that emotion can trump common sense and knowledge.

Read more here.