Lauren Clifford
Senior Writer
3years covering personal finance
115+ articles on LendingTree
Interviewed by multiple media outlets for personal loan research
Certified Financial Health Counselor™ via the National Association of Certified Credit Counselors
Specialties
Personal loans
Auto loans
Credit cards
Education
Bachelor of Arts, University of California, Los Angeles
Master of Arts, New York University
Lauren Clifford is a senior writer at LendingTree with nearly a decade of experience in professional writing and editing. She is also an NACCC Certified Financial Health Counselor™, a designation that reflects formal training in consumer financial behavior and financial decision-making. She covers consumer lending and finance trends, translating complex topics into clear, actionable insights.
Her analysis of LendingTree research has been cited by major outlets, including CBS News MoneyWatch, CNN, CNBC, JP Morgan Chase and Yahoo Finance. Most recently, she independently pitched and executed a nationwide personal loan shopping study that earned televised coverage from multiple media outlets.
She has written popular LendingTree articles such as Best Personal Loans and Fast Food, Slow Pay: Fast Food Workers Can’t Afford the Basics in Every Large U.S. Metro. Lauren has also assisted in developing the rating methodologies for several personal and auto loans pages.
Her work focuses on helping consumers make more informed financial decisions by combining data-driven insights with practical, real-world context.
Bringing work home
My four-year-old son has recently shown an interest in money. I’ll sometimes chat with him about the basics, but I wasn’t sure how much he was retaining until he offered to sell me a piece of his pizza for $100,000 at dinner last week. When I countered with $2, he told me I could ‘just get a loan’ to pay him the full $100,000."
