Could the Debt Free Concept Go Viral?
October 18th, 2007 by Ana
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!
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October 18th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
I think you’re on to something here. I think the DebtFREE-Revolution (to borrow the title of your blog) is going to start on the internet, but it’s going to move on from there.
I didn’t tell anyone I had a blog at first, but then I told my parents and one of my local friends. My parents read from time to time, and my friend reads my blog every day. We got together to visit last Friday, and we ended up spending a great deal of time talking about money and finances. And I know it was because my blog opened the door of communication.
So my opinion is that the Debt Free concept will go viral. It’s just beginning, baby!
October 18th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
Excellent post. I have trouble having “real” conversations about this (as opposed to posts on my blog) because I think most people are where I was a year ago. They don’t keep track of their money, think they are wealthy because they can make the monthly minimums, and so on. In other words, they have no clue who Dave Ramsey is.
Many of my relatives have poor financial skills and think the way to getting out of debt is to file bankruptcy. I’m so sad for them! Great people, just no financial skills. We have a grab bag at Christmas and my gift is going to be Dave’s TMMO book. It will be interesting to see the reaction I get!
So far most of my money conversations are here on the Internet, where I can meet other “weird” people like myself…
October 18th, 2007 at 7:27 pm
I hope it goes viral. The more people who realize being in debt does not have to be a lifestyle, the better.
By the way, download FireFox for your browser. It is awesome and free. You can place the StubleUpon toolbar in your browser. In fact, it automatically placed itself in my browser when I signed up for SU. Then Stumble my site.
October 19th, 2007 at 7:25 am
Great thoughts! I sure hope it goes viral.
I thought my family would think I was nuts so I haven’t talked about it much. But when home on vacation I mentioned to my mom a little bit about it, and that we wanted to pay off our cars and be completely debt free. And I left it that.
A few weeks later my mom emails me with a grocery budget question. They had bought the Dave Ramsey book and workbook, and were almost done with BS #1 and were working on the budget. I’m really happy for them, and I’m hoping through them it might help my brother a bit too.
October 19th, 2007 at 10:00 am
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October 19th, 2007 at 10:01 am
Wow Erin, I wish I could have had the same results with my family! Mabe they just need to see me succeed at it first? And Lynnae, green, and Pastrick, I am with y’all in hoping that it does go viral!
October 19th, 2007 at 10:04 am
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October 20th, 2007 at 5:42 am
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October 20th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
Ana,
Maybe. Some people are just really skeptical about the whole thing. They may be thinking in the back of their head that the whole debt-free plan will never work. So when they see you succeed they might be less skeptical and want to learn more! One can always hope right?
October 29th, 2007 at 1:18 pm
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