Blogging Your Debt Away
Some Debtors Find Blogging As A Way To Communicate About Their Waste Deep Debt.
When a woman who goes by the name “Tricia: discovered last week that she owed $22,302 on her credit cards. She says she’s too ashamed of her personal debt to talk to her. She did the unthinkable and went online posting intimate details of her financial life, including her net worth (now negative $38,691), the balance and finance charges on her credit cards, and the amount of debt she has paid down since starting a blog about her debt last year ($15,312). Tricia said her credit problems began in her freshman year at Michigan Technological University, when she opened a Visa account in return for the campus signup premium, a large candy bar. Boo! That’s where CCs get you. Since then, she said, she has rarely made more than minimum payments.
Her journal, bloggingawaydebt.com, is one of dozens that have sprung up in recent years taking advantage of Internet anonymity to reveal to strangers fiscal intimacies the authors might not tell their closest friends. A blog called “Poorer Than You” (kgazette.blogspot.com) describes the financial doings of a 20-year-old film-school dropout. (Typical post: “Yesterday we ate lunch at Subway for a total of $8.00, and went grocery shopping … with a list! And didn’t buy anything that wasn’t on it!”) On saveleighann.blogspot.com, Leigh Ann Fraley provides daily accounts of her escape from $19,947 in credit card debt.
One engaged couple who say they are behind a blog called “Make Love, Not Debt” (makelovenotdebt.com; net worth: negative $70,787.94), the feedback from readers has not always been gentle. “People have very strong feelings about debt,” said the blog’s female half, who calls herself Her. “People were appalled by my spending, like buying a $500 pair of shoes.” Figures!
