My journey into the world of finance began at University College Dublin, where I obtained both a Bachelor of Commerce and Masters in Accounting. Since graduating in 2017, I’ve dedicated my professional career to mastering the ins and outs of personal finance in Ireland.

I started out as a chartered accountant [ACA] with PwC, before qualifying as a chartered tax advisor [CTA] and a qualified financial advisor [QFA]. Early in my career I realised that much of the information online on personal finance was inadequate for ordinary readers. Outside of formal textbooks and professional courses (which could be extremely technical), the quality of the content was remarkably poor. I was convinced that there was a better way to make this often complicated information accessible to everyone.

So in 2020, I decided to set up a YouTube channel, Malone Financial, to create everyday financial content that was both useful and easy to understand.

After uploading my first video on Irish taxes in October 2020, I was astonished by how many people found the content useful. This proved what I thought all along – that people were hungry for clear and straightforward information on financial topics.  The positive feedback inspired me to create more content on pensions, mortgages, savings, and everything in between. And after a few dozen videos and hundreds of comments of gratitude, questions and requests for more content, I decided to pursue my new found passion for creating educational content full-time.

Over the past five years, I’ve posted over 300 videos to my 20,000 subscribers, which have been watched over a million times.

But something was still bothering me. Personal finance can be deep and complex, and answering everybody’s questions while keeping the content engaging was proving difficult due to the sheer volume of requests and broad range of topics that people were interested in. It became clear that YouTube just wasn’t going to be enough. 

So I created Honest.