“The Biggest Loser” is a television show that teaches people how to eat healthy. “Loser” here refers to the person who loses the most excess fat and millions tune in to watch the show every week. "I love that show," says Alexa Von Tobel, a Harvard graduate and founder of LearnVest, a website dedicated to helping ordinary Americans organize their financial life. "The six million people who tune in every Tuesday learn about healthy choices and the basics of living a healthy lifestyle. I wish there was a show like that about personal finance." So she put in $75,000 (about Kshs. 6.2 million) of her own funds and $1.1 million seed money from Goldman Sachs, and she started LearnVest believing that "you can stop a lot of (financial) problems from starting if you simply empower people to have some of the financial basics in their head before they start," she says in an interview with The Daily Ticker.

Her first words of advice:

1. Have a financial plan. Understand what you're trying to achieve for the next three to five years and understand how to dice up all of the money you take home every month.
2. Live by a budget.
3. Prioritize debt repayment.
4. Have 6 months-worth of emergency savings on hand.
5. Start saving for retirement now!
6. Negotiate your salary.

And we agree. Have a financial plan (this includes a budget), adhere to that budget (do not spend more than you have), any debt you may have should be cleared as fast as possible and start saving for retirement as soon as you start earning an income. And hey, about that job, negotiate, try and get as much as you reasonably can, I mean, you are rendering a service right?

Adapted from Yahoo Finance