Sunday, February 26, 2006

Talking about money is a no-no

My favorite things to browse on the internet are (in no particular order): food, games and money. I bring this up because lately, I've been having periodic fits of money obsessions and I find myself (like tonight), lost in a sea of personal finance blogs reading about nameless faces' net worths and saving techniques and suggestions. There are tons of blogs out there on every subject under the sun and I started thinking that maybe I should start writing about personal finance tidbits that I find interesting. The problem is, talking about money is one of those taboo subjects.

If I had an "anonymous" blog, I would feel free to write about all my trials and triumphs related to money. But since I personally know people who read my blog, I usually don't put hard numbers in the blog, but make general statements like, "I want to save more." Isn't that odd? I'm pretty forthright and if a good friend wanted to discuss it, I would. However, it's weird to have acquaintances knowing the ins and outs of my financial world. After a minute more of thought, I think the problem I have with it is the inequality of information. I have a couple friends that I can discuss all my financial stuff with because it's a give and take situation. We discuss our situations and I know about their money woes too.

How do other people reconcile this? I'm in good shape financially, so it's not like it's an embarassment or anything. Hmmm... I guess it's just not considered "polite" to talk about money, sex and religion. Technically, it's my blog, so I guess I could talk about anything I want, but... I don't know. I'm considering it. Just putting it out there.

In the meantime, there's a website where you can track your net worth called NetWorthIQ. You can plug in your numbers and see how you compare to others. I think some of them are inflated though and throw off the averages. There's no verification to make sure things are on the up and up. Thanks to the southern California real estate market, my net worth looks pretty good. Yea!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I know what you mean. Since I have family members that check my site regularly, I tend to not want to post any specifics in regard to money. I love to read about money, talk about money, make money, save money....
There are very few people that I feel like I can be open with about our financial situation. I pretty much leave it at we're debt free, and saving money for our future like crazy! But I don't give any specifics on amounts.