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In a previous post, I refer to a conversation with my Sister where she tells me that she knew how to handle her money. She was polite and didn’t tell me that she doesn’t need a personal finance blog to tell her how!
Even though it hurts my “Personal Finance Blogger” ego, I do concede that she’s right.
Everybody who has a bit of common sense, can manage their money. This post is about the value of personal finance advice and articles. It is important to not just believe blindly on the advice given, but to have an eye on how to apply those advice to your situation.
Let’s take a look at the various sources of advice/articles on money management.
Gurus: We read personal finance articles by gurus/experts and we discover new ways to invest our money, rebuild our credit or acquire loans. There is nothing inherently wrong with this research, except there is a hidden trap to believing everything these personal finance articles describe.
Unfortunately, an Insurance expert will not say anything against ULIPs. The Stocks guy will only explain the advantages of investing in stocks and point to the costs of investing in Mutual Funds.
The point I want to make is that these experts may not necessarily have a holistic view of all the financial products available and tend to stick to their own domain expertise. That’s what my experience tells me.
Columnists: I often see a lot of crap being written on the esteemed national dailies in the garb of personal finance advice. Often these are written by journos, who don’t really understand the financial markets. They write the piece citing interviews by the experts. There’s hardly any independent analysis apart from joining together a string of quotes from the experts.
Bloggers: Not all Bloggers are successful, experienced guys and who are an authority on the subject. Some of these guys are posting their thoughts on how they are managing their own money and some are giving tips while learning. To be partial, (I’m a blogger too 
) this source would be the most credible as these guys are posting live and real questions.
But the downside of reading up on Bloggers is that the question they answer may not be Your Question. Everone’s financial situation is unique and so are the questions (as well as the answers!).
Conclusion: What I’m trying to say is that personal finance articles can just give you a sense of direction and nothing more. It’s YOU, who have to perform your own due diligence and have an eye on what’s good for you and what isn’t.
Use these personal finance articles for motivating yourself, and to help you discover money ideas that you may have not considered. Trust your common sense when it comes to money, because no one knows your unique situation better than yourself.
PS: All these thoughts have guided me to conceptualize the “RupeeManager”, which is a software for your money management. The idea is to have an easy to use tool that helps you with measurement, management and making your money work for you.
I edit Personal Finance Online Resources, nurture Financial Literacy Foundation, deliver Financial Awareness Workshops and have built a desktop RupeeManager.
Invite me for a talk. Email me on ranjan@ranjanvarma.com or Call me on +919867755615
Why Personal Finance Articles & Advice is Useless » Ranjan Varma was kind of helpfull, but easy finance could be more in detail. Averall, was good info about easy finance
Thanks for publishing about this. There’s a bunch of bad info about finance on the Net.Your blog it’s awesome it has good article, I found a lot of awesome info about finance here.I’ve been keeping an eye on this blog for awhile.I searched very long time a blog like yours,thanks for helping me with finance keep up the good work
Your blog keeps getting better and better! I’ve been following your posts for a while now and I gotta say that your older articles don’t offer as much insight as the newer articles.You have a lot more creativity and style now! BTW, if you’re looking into placing some advertisements on your blog – you should really do it. Don’t go for all that 3rd party bs – Use a nice WordPress monetization tool coded by a buddy of mine which by far the best, it’s a must have plugin for any serious blogger. You can find it at Thaidy.com/Top10WordPressPlugins and give it a free test-run (To make it easier for you, I linked my name to the site). Oh, and there is a nice discount coupon in the sidebar of the mainpage for you.
Keep up the good work buddy!
as for my retirement, i plan to retire on an asian country and live a quiet and simple life.~`~