I’m simultaneously an early adopter and the last one to the party. I signed up for a Twitter account long ago, but never did anything with it. I didn’t see the point. Now, though, it seems to have hit some sort of critical mass. Even my non-geeky friends are using it to keep in touch. I’ve been updating my Twitter account once or twice a day for the past month, but haven’t yet turned it into personal finance commentary.
Some people do use Twitter to supplement their blogs. For example, via his Twitter account, Ramit pointed to a short post at SocketSite about what happens when expectations don’t match the market. Buyers and sellers of homes are often worlds apart on pricing lately. “Americans are horrible at negotiating,” writes Ramit. “They take personal offense at lowball offers.” (This reminds me the recent guest post from a reader who uses haggling to save big bucks.)
Here are a couple of non-Twitter personal finance stories:
I’ve talked a lot about post-collegiate finances this week, which prompted two readers to send me an MSN article about why Generation Y is broke. “Today, people in their 20s and 30s are more educated than ever before…This generation of adults is also, of course, the most technologically sophisticated to date…And yet stats indicate our generation’s financial literacy is abysmal, with personal finances to match.” As an interesting footnote, the author observes that states are returning to financial education in public schools.
Finally, NCN at No Credit Needed has a novel trick I’ve never heard before. He’s implemented a $100-a-day rule to prevent impulse buying. For every $100 that he wants to spend on a new product, he forces himself to wait one day before making the purchase. Want a Nintendo Wii? Wait three days. Want a fancy bicycle? Wait a week. Want a Mini Cooper? Well, you’d better wait most of a year. This is a great trick.
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I just joined twitter too. I’m not sure what to think about it. I don’t know if I want to read everyone’s updates all the time. I think I’d prefer something that was based more on direct messaging. I know it has a direct messaging feature, but is that used much? Maybe it is, I am new to this.
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I know what you mean, Andy. Twitter can be overwhelming to me. Some of my friends update a dozen times a day. I hate to do it, but I unfollow them. I like a slow pace with slices of their life that I don’t normally get to see. And I love following Penelope Trunk’s tweets. She can pack a lot of story into 140 characters. I’m not kidding when I say reading her Twitter feed is making me a better writer.
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Speaking of twitterpated, I got a little carried away tonight in a silly hour. Linked to that site this time instead of my standard one, if you’d like to see the results of my silliness.
Sorry for all the updates, JD, I guess I see it as much as a public chat as it’s anything else. Combo chat/forum/away message/mini-blog.
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That’s pretty interesting about the states requiring teaching of financial education.
I’m 27 years old and I actually remember having a unit in 4th grade, where we wrote checks to pay for a pretend party we threw and then had to balance our pretend checking accounts.
On a funny sidenote, I was a cashier at my college bookstore one semester. I actually remember a freshman walking up with all of his books. When I rang them up, I told him the total. He whipped out his checkbook, opened it to the first check, stared at it for a second, and then stared up at me blankly.
He didn’t know how to write a check.
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Penelope has great tweets. When she started following me, I started following her. I think she reached out to everyone in her address book and now she has a huge following.
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I have most of my twitters automatically sent to my blog via loudtwitter. Currently I filter out replies (@twitterID) since the context normally wouldn’t be in just my feed.
The interesting thing with twitter for me is that I got into it because coworkers were doing it. I don’t think most of my coworkers know about my blog, but I do know many (including the company’s CEO and COO) follow my tweets. Granted I don’t post to my blog things I wouldn’t want coworkers to read, but there’s a difference between “coworker might find this” and “I know certain coworkers will see this.” :>
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I signed up with Twitter the week it came out (I am a nerd, so are all of my friends…) and burnt out pretty quickly. I go in to read every now and again but lately I, too, have been thinking about becoming more active. There are SO MANY more members now.
One cool thing you may like is a thing called Twistori – I just found it a few days ago and am MESMORIZED: http://twistori.com
It gives you a real-time scroll of all tweets that occur with the words that you select – I think, I feel, I wish…
Reading the “I wish” roll is really a trip. Check it out!
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A note on Gen Y. My eightteen year old son just landed his first “real” job as a CNA. He is starting at $9.50 an hour. He is going to NIU this fall and will be a CNA while attending school. I think the family has talked him out of taking out student loans. But the whole budgeting thing seems to be beyond him. I have tried to teach him. Now I have to stand back and let him sink or swim.
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I too signed up last year only to get bored with it after a week of trying to explain to friends what it was and how it worked. I started to use it again a few weeks ago now that more people are using it, but I’ve also found that only a small percentage of people, mostly very tech savvy or bloggers use it. I actually had to stop getting SMS updates from one blogger whom I really like and has a HUGE following because he was using it, imho as spam, sending out 15-25 tweets per day, none personal, all just links to articles he’s written on his network of blogs.
I’m down to follow you JD…
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There is a problem with the $100 a day rule: Wiis are either there the moment you see them, or not.
However, that doesnt’ mean you can’t BUDGET to have the available funds for when you DO see one!
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I’m skeptical about this newfangled twitter business. The tiny glances I’ve seen make it look like a really dumb waste of time.. but perhaps I’m looking at the wrong twitterers (tweeters?). I mean, I really do not care to read about a person waiting for the bus or thinking about getting a beer.
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Bethh – Most of the people I follow on twitter are people I know personally. That said, MOST of those I follow read on the web only, for when I want to see what’s going on.
At conventions I change it a bit. Tweets from friends who I know will be at the convention get sent directly to my phone, which helps to meet up and coordinate
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I wish that someone had sat me down and taught me about finance when I was younger. Or that my parents had taken the time to start me on a personal savings plan (they were already saving for my college account). I can remember telling my mom about this crazy plan that I had come up with to save money. I was going to write down all the groceries that I would buy, as if I would had I been living on my own and paying for it myself at the time, and then put that amount in a savings account. She laughed good natured way at the idea and told me not to worry about it until I really did have to start paying for it myself.
Since it’s been a while since anyone but myself has payed for my groceries, looking back I wish I had done it. It seems like these days I’m lucky if I get to spend more than $40 dollars a month on food because it vanishes into other areas of my life.
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I use a version of the $100 a day rule to keep within my budget. After we pay bills, childcare expenses, mortgage, etc. I have a certain amount of money every month to do all the rest–groceries, fun money, random expenses. Let’s say that’s $900–I divide that by $30 and that means I can spend $30/day or ca. $230/week.
I find it’s fairly easy for me to keep a running tally in my head. Did I go to the grocery store and spend $90? Then I need to throttle back and not spend much out of pocket for the next two days. (Undoubtedly I bought enough food to pack my lunch to work in that time!) I don’t deny myself a cup of coffee if I need one on those days, but I also don’t go out and splurge shoe-shopping on my lunch hour.
Maybe a couple of times a month I check in with my bank balance and make sure I’m on track and adjust accordingly. If I find I’m a little “behind” where I planned to be I can go spend on something I’ve been waiting for.
Somehow this is easier for me to keep track of than a running tally. It also helps that I don’t have to categorize it all–the money has to account for both wants and needs, which is too hard to juggle mentally when they’re all compartmentalized. It is nicely self-regulating in that when there have been a lot of “needs” (gas, food, clothes for the kids) that means I have to rein it in on the “wants”.
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I’ve been a “Tweeter” for a couple of months. I have met some pretty cool people on there with a variety of POV’s. News articles, self promotion, hilarious banter.
I believe it will continue to grow in popularity and in people using it as a marketing tool in their arsenal to build their business and drive targeted traffic to their website. I don’t think a lot of people know that yet. Especially when you have a large “following”.
I really appreciate you posting that $100 day rule. I didn’t see that post. That is good stuff…yet so simple.
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You can also setup an account with twitterfeed.com to have a message posted on your twitter account everytime you post a new story on your blog. Or other site that has an RSS feed.
Nice way to keep people posted on updates.
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I’m a little skeptical of the $100 a day rule. If you are disciplined enough to follow this rule, then it seems you would be disciplined enough not to impulsively throw money away in the first place. It just seems too easy to talk yourself out of any $100 per day situation if you are not too disciplined. Say, it’s Sunday and I’m thinking I want to buy a Wii. I could justify that I’ve been thinking about it for weeks already, so it’s no problem, when in reality, it is.
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