Many people think that personal finance blogs are only relevant to individual needs, but this is far from the truth. In fact, managing your personal finances is a business and many Americans are failing miserably at it.
Current stats estimate that 80% or more of people
in the United States live paycheck to paycheck.
The average savings rate is less than 2% while more than 50% of baby boomers have less than $50,000 saved for retirement. If personal finance were a business, there would be a plethora of bankruptcies in the US alone.
To make matters worse, we don’t know how to manage our own personal finances, so we trust our money and investing to other people that we think are professionals. They don’t really do much better than we can on our own, except that they charge us all kinds of fees for their expertise.
At the end of the day, managing your personal finances is no different than running a business. You have to set up and manage a budget, monitor cash flows, keep an eye on debt levels, manage your credit and make decisions about investments you want to make.
Here’s a beginner’s guide to basic finance for those who could use one:
Credit Repair
One common topic on personal finance blogs is credit repair or improving credit scores in general. While the blog may be geared towards personal credit score improvement or repairing credit, the same strategy can be used for a business. Credit scores are determined in the same manner and repairing a business credit score is the same process.
Budgeting
Another common post type on personal finance blogs deals with managing a budget. Personal budgeting is the same as business budgeting, except that it can be much simpler than some more complex businesses.
At the end of the day you are just managing your income vs. your expenses. In personal finance your income is mostly derived from your job and the paycheck that you receive.
Your expenses consist of utilities, loan payments, credit payments and other various costs. In business your expenses more or less are the same except that you have the addition of employees and the costs associated with that.
Your income is similar except it’s derived from your businesses product or service sales. When it’s all said and done, learning how to manage a budget in either category can translate well into the other.
Managing Debt
Another popular topic on personal finance blogs is managing debt and learning about loans. While the articles on personal finance blogs are usually focused on houses and cars, the same principles can be applied to business loans that need to be made for property, plant and equipment investments as your business grows.
Best Personal Finance Blogs
Now that I’ve given you a strong case for the value of learning about finance and investing from personal finance blogs and how that same education can help you in business, you need to find blogs where you can find the information.
The easiest way is to look for blogs that post current lists of top personal finance sites. Modest Money is one such blog that publishes a regularly updated list of the best personal finance blogs on their website. This list ranks personal finance sites based on social media presence, SEO scores and traffic to the site. This is a great place to start your search for great websites to learn valuable finance and investing skills or other ideas that can also help you in business.
