FiLife: Social Media and Financial Help at its Finest
FiLife, a partnership with the Wall Street Journal, provides an amazing tool for community interaction. From questions posted to the community via Twitter, reviews, comments, a blog and the option to become a writer in your area of expertise, it offers an wonderful and engaging opportunity for people to connect and share information around finance and money matters.
I posted a question regarding finding the best options for a 529 (college savings account) and within a day got two very thoughful answers to point me in the right direction. It is so awesome that there’s a community (or many of them) out there of people that are simply interested in helping out. I very much enjoy the email updates that are sent when something is updated. It reminds me of Facebook in its ability to engage, but for your finances, obviously.
Rating: 
So far, I’ve use the Twitter @AskFiLife to ask a question, answered a few polls, and added some comments to articles.
Beyond that, I tried out their “Action Plan” to see what they would offer for budgeting suggestions and tips.
My Financial Expense Breakdown on FiLife
As you can see from this pie chart – they gave me a decent breakdown of my expenses.
They then followed this by showing me which of my expenses were ‘fixed’ or expenses that it is difficult to change, and which were flexible.
Unfortunately for me, most of my expenses are pretty fixed, so that’s where the life changing steps are going to have to take place soon (ie sell our house or find a way to get more income). Our house is on the market, so hopefully things will pick up for that after the holidays. In the meantime, we are plowing away at getting the right accounts and knowledge to take the steps we need with saving and investing when our expenses do decrease.
Overall, I’ve joined quite a few forums such as wisebread, the motley fool and some mom related ones, but I have found this community format to be the most useful and intriguing to date.
Does anyone use FiLife? What other community site and forums do you like for personal finance?
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Ariel, thank you for giving FiLife a chance and then taking the time to write such a great blog post!
Keep checking back and let us know if you think there are areas we can improve in.
Regards,
Paul Kennard
FiLife.com