Could the Debt Free Concept Go Viral?
The other day I was reading an interesting article over at Yahoo called Hanging with the Money Crowd. It basically takes that study released the other month about how being overweight tends to happen in clusters, and muses whether the same is true about money. I have to admit I wondered the same thing.
My family is not the best with money. Neither was my first husband for that matter, or several of the soldiers I hung out with when I was in the Army. Not surprisingly, until I discovered Dave Ramsey after Christmas in 2006, I was pretty horrid at handling money myself.
Now that I’ve learned a few things about proper money management, I have found myself hanging out online at various PF blogs and the My Total Money Makeover forums and chat room and it really is rubbing off on me. But let’s take this idea even a step further (prompted by watching Maxed Out three times in the past week) and say the whole debt free idea manages to go “viral” as they say on the web.
The question is: How to get the ball rolling? Where do you start out? How many of us discuss our finances in such detail in normal social settings? How many of us actually discuss our finances in such detail with family? I tried discussing it with my family, and they basically covered their ears and said, “Lalalala I can’t hear you.” No, not literally, but it did go in one ear and out the other. I tried discussing it with hubby’s family, which ended up in a financial tug-of-war about the stupid truck. I try to mention little things at school or at work (like…I don’t have any student loans!) and that gets mild curiosity because it’s just so unusual.
So, that kind of just leaves us the internet. It’s annonymous enough for people to open up about such a touchy subject, but can still be cool and personable enough at the same time. With a little help from my teenage son, and some urging from my more tech-savvy-geekish blogging buddies, I have set up an account at del.icio.us and stumble upon, even though I can’t for the life of me get the stumble buttons on my toolbar. (Anyone know if stumble has issues with Win 2000 or AOL? Should I even admit to having AOL on my computer?) My son is also threatening/promising to set me up with a myspace and facebook account….we’ll see just how good that works LOL.
If it works and gets even just a handful of people on board, it will be worth the headache involved in learning this new medium, because if each person can get a handful of people into the debt free concept, and they get a handful of people into the idea of being debt free…ad naseum this could really take off and help out everyone’s life and money! Maybe it’s not that modest of a goal, but they do say “Aim High,” right? Oh wait…that was the Air Force!
