Sunday meet the press
The Washington Post has an article this morning, Wanna Talk Money (By Nancy Trejos), which examines how people are taking their money thoughts and discussions online at various social personal finance sites, including NetworthIQ. It’s always exciting to be included in a major media publication.
First, just to clear up one thing from the article. It mentions the public aspect of net worth tracking a couple times, but doing anything publicly is strictly optional, and about 1/3 of members choose this approach. The article’s comments have a lot of negativity about “bragging” and such, and NetworthIQ is not about bragging in any way. In my quote I mention:
“It comes from the whole MySpace generation. Once people become comfortable being social online, it extends into other areas, such as personal finance,”
Which is true, but I still think we can look to all of the great personal finance blogs for more understanding of why people get social about money. In short, because its a way to keep people accountable to themselves and to find help from people that have been or in a similar situation.
But, not to leave without mentioning my favorite part of the article. Owen Graham, a NetworthIQ member, had this great quote about why he uses it:
Each month, he updates his profile with information about how much he spent and saved. He said the site has made him less of a spender and more of a saver. “Now I’m really paying attention,” he said. “It’s one of those things that keeps me motivated in trying to head in the right direction. I would have no idea how much I had in retirement at any given time, and now I’m pretty cognizant of what’s in there and how the markets are doing.”
If we can help people be more saver and less spender than we’re doing the job we set out to do.