5 Ways To Get Financial Advice With Social Media

Linda Bustos is the Marketing Director for Image X Media, a web design firm in Vancouver, BC. She is also the fingers behind the SMogger Social Media Blog.

It’s the year 2007 and niche social networks are popping up faster than {insert corny cliché here}.

There are social networks for environmentalists, for cat lovers (or dog lovers), and even for inventors!

Social media refers to any Web community where users can add their own content and connect with each other. Blogs satisfy the social media criteria by means of comments. Other social media sites you may be familiar with are forum / message boards.

The following are a few of the ways you can use social media to get financial advice, manage your budget, get hot stock tips and even lend and borrow money!

43Things

Get out of Debt is a popular tag over at the social goal setting community 43Things. Here you can “tag” different goals you have for nearly anything under the sun, and comment on whether you’ve “done this” or “want to do this.” You can ask questions related to your goals which members of the community can answer. You can receive a “wealth” of personal finance information here (pun intended), or at the very least get reassurance you’re not alone in your fight against debt.

A similar service is Yahoo Answers.

Wesabe

Wesabe is a really amazing social community slash personal budgeting console. When you join the community, you get instant access to personal finance tips and finance goals submitted by the community, and you have the option of uploading up to 12 credit card or bank accounts into your account. The Wesabe software tracks your transactions, and has the intelligence to match your transaction details with money saving tips. An example provided in the Wesabe video tour is when you spend money on groceries, you can view tips on saving money at the supermarket. And you can help it “learn” what transactions are what by the “tags” you apply to describe them.

Wesabe not only shows you retrospective spending habits, but can steer you on the way to making better choices in the future. Setting spending targets helps you stick to your budget – and sometimes you need a piece of software that will just keep tabs on these things for you!

Prosper.com

Prosper is a social network where you can post a request for a loan or bid on others’ loan requests. Sound scary? Prosper ensures 100% identity theft security, secure servers, your information is never shared and the site has expert fraud detection and prevention capability. Although as a lender, the high interest rates you could realize seem great, keep in mind that this type of investment carries greater risk, plus, all Prosper loans are for a three year term. You can’t just pull your money out when you need to.

A more detailed review of the inherent risks of this type of model can be found at My Money Blog, who also provides some thoughts on the average returns versus the loan default rate using Prosper.

SocialPicks

If you’re a real risk taker, you’ll enjoy this social stock picker community. You can share investment ideas, exchange market tips and even follow other users’ investment portfolios. SocialPicks also keeps tabs on the pros – bloggers, professional market analysts and even Warren Buffet and you can see how your picks stack up against their picks’ performance.

Destroy Debt Forum

Traditional forums may be an old concept, but still tap into the power of social media to share ideas and get answers to your questions. The Destroy Debt Forum is a relatively new forum, but covers a wide range of debt topics including debt reduction, debt settlement, budgeting, investing and identity theft. A traditional forum may be more user friendly for Internet users who are familiar with the mechanics of message boards and don’t want to learn a whole new system.

We can only expect to see more personal finance social networks developing in the next couple of years. Have you had any experience with these networks? Drop a comment and let’s start a discussion!

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3 Responses

  1. James O. says:

    Don’t forget mechanicsofmoney.com, the site where financial advisers provide responses to financial questions.

  2. sandy says:

    What about manageME?
    I have also bookmarked its latest version manageME7
    also its blogs are intersting and informative.You may check it at http://www.manageme7.com/blog

  3. Ram says:

    I have been using Perfios – http://www.perfios.com, a completely free web based software…
    – Ram

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