How Personal Finance Blogs Changed My Life

Somewhere along the line the traditionally stodgy, secretive world of investment and finance collided head-on with the wild and woolly blogosphere to create one of the Web's best-kept secrets: the personal finance blog. Through personal finance blogs, everyone from ordinary cubicle workers to single mothers to MBAs have the opportunity to share their struggles, musings and lessons as they follow a budget, save for the future and tackle various financial obstacles.

I graduated college in 2005 with a good ethic toward saving my money and keeping out of credit card debt, which, sadly, put me ahead of the vast majority of recent college graduates today. What I didn't have was some sort of long-term financial plan, or clear goals, or any defined notions of what my retirement would look like. Being a product of the Internet age, I knew where my first resource to look would be.

My first encounter with personal finance blogs came in January of 2006, trying to compare rates at online banks. At first, I simply found the blogs a useful source of information, and justified my return visits as simply an educational experience, but as days went on and I grew to 'know' my favorite bloggers, I realized I was hooked on the stories as much as the handy financial management tips. And, as any young person would be proud to boast, I got into the trend before the mainstream did-by the time "BusinessWeek" magazine did an article on these blogs, I'd been part of the community long enough to recognize all the names mentioned!

Personal finance blogging not only puts a name (and sometimes a face) on the issues, but tackles them in a voice by and for the common investor. The conversational tone and friendly "we're all in this together" feel of the personal finance blog makes a refreshing change from the sometimes daunting exterior of the more august financial literature. And as the Web increasingly leans toward a trend of user-defined content, it's no wonder that people flock to the product of ordinary Internet denizens publishing their own little financial magazines. Personal finance blogs combine clarity with honesty. And as a recent college graduate, I needed a little of both to face my financial situation.

Reading personal finance blogs on a daily basis got me started on the basics of setting up my Roth IRA, figuring out how much I would need to save for retirement, understanding how the Fed's prime rate affected my savings and estimating my annual tax burden. But more that that, personal finance blogs got me emotionally invested in, well, investing. One of the secrets of responsible saving is to be regular about it; reading blogs every day puts me in a daily regimen of thinking about money and making sure it's working for me.

And what could be a better cautionary tale against credit card debt than a blog about the struggles of a young person my age to dig herself out from under it? What better a way to goad me into saving than thinking, "Huh, this blogger saved a coupla hundred bucks this month, can I match that?" Things like that. The voyeuristic aspect of personal finance blogging isn't just addictive; it's insightful.

If knowledge is power, consider personal finance blogs my daily workout; I continue to read personal finance blogs every day, a little over a year after first discovering the trend, and to be honest, I'm not necessarily learning anything new. Obviously it's a good way to follow current events, but I don't need weekly posts on the differences between 'good debt' and 'bad debt' or the gloom-and-doom 'slow news day' articles about America's poor savings rate. What I do need, however, is discipline. And while I've never started my own personal finance blog, nor do I plan to start blogging, personal finance blogs put me in the mindset of taking daily responsibility for my own financial situation. And that's not just useful advice to take to heart for a week's paycheck, but for a lifetime.

This article would not be complete without the note that a personal finance blog is what led me to Associated Content. If I can pay the community back by sending someone else in the reverse direction, I'll consider it an even trade. To that end, scope out the 'supporting links' section for an article I prepared earlier about the best personal finance blogs. Why not check a few out? After all, it might be nice to develop a hobby that saves you money for a change.

In the meantime, I can wait for Associated Content to pay me for this article. And thanks to personal finance blogs, I've got some pretty good ideas on how to save it wisely.