Do You Have a Financial Confidant?

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Do You Have a Financial Confidant?

By JLP | October 29, 2007

OneFrugalGirl asks: Do you have a financial confidant? In her post, One Frugal Girls wondered why one of her friends was comfortable telling her the price of a home she was thinking about buying while another friend wouldn’t divulge the information. It’s an interesting question. Could modesty play a part? Maybe her friend felt that talking about the price might come across as bragging. Or, maybe the price was low and she didn’t want to give the impression that she was strapped? Who knows.

I’m pretty open about our finances with my dad only because we talk fairly often. I don’t blog about the miute details of our finances here on this blog because I’m not anonymous. I’ll just tell you that we are in the middle of the middle class.

Other than my dad (and of course my wife), I don’t talk specifics about our finances.

What about you? Do you talk about your personal finances with friends?

Rather than comment here, why don’t you head over to OneFrugalGirl and comment there (I don’t want to steal her topic).

Topics: Relationship Finance |

Comments to “Do You Have a Financial Confidant?”

Mia Says:
October 29th, 2007 at 8:26 pm

I was raised to believe that talking about finances was impolite - it was rude to ask what someone paid for an item (be nosey or possibly embarrass someone) and it was rude to tell someone what you paid for something (bragging). The not asking part is still good manners - but the not telling part is changing in todays world. My husband and I were just talking last night about how nice it is now that people are sharing more about finances - instead of money being some great big secret. A lot of people (especially bloggers and people under age 30) are now sharing their knowledge, mistakes, and triumphs regarding finances and that is a very good thing for everyone! (it’s still not polite to brag about money though)

To this day, my father (in his 60’s) won’t talk about money, not even to me his only child. I have no idea how he’s doing financially or what I can expect (if anything) to contribute financially to his care in his old age. I have no idea if he has retirement savings or if he owns his house. Growing up (and still) I had no idea of what he earned each month/year. Too much privacy about money isn’t always such a good idea and I’m really glad to see this attitude changing.

Nicole Says:
October 29th, 2007 at 10:23 pm

I have a mentor that I share financial details with, I am also not afraid to share with friends. Although I do talk about money for a living! LOL.

BuildAndSucceed Says:
October 30th, 2007 at 5:06 am

This is a good topic.. I can talk about certain details of my finances with no problem to certain people like my girlfriend who lives with me. But other than that I like to keep it to myself because I’d like to avoid being asked for money favors in the future.

DebtKid Says:
October 30th, 2007 at 6:23 am

Beyond my immediate family (who all know about my financial situation…), I have told one close friend about my mistakes and my current financial situation (situation? disaster maybe…). I’ve chosen to keep it from my other friends I don’t see on a day to day basis.

At some point I will tell more of my friends about my mistakes, but I want to be in a better place first. Not the 300K+ in debt that I have now.

It’s a tough balance though, and my choice to limit my openness has dramatically reduced the emotional depth (hopefully just temporally) of a number of my relationships.

One Frugal Girl Says:
October 30th, 2007 at 8:32 pm

I’m glad you liked the post and happy to see comments on the topic. I agree with the bragging component, as my salary increases I speak less and less often about pay rates, but more often about other, broader financial topics.

And I totally agree with Mia… your comfort level in discussing these issues has a lot to do with the way you were raised.

Richard Says:
October 31st, 2007 at 11:10 am

It has happened on several occations where someone has said: “Come on, you can afford , you make .” Each time it causes me to launch into a stop smoking type conversations where I talk about how bad their credit card debt is and how they won’t be able to retire. Needless to say those never go over well and fortunately for me, noone knows what my salary is now.

The key difference is: Salary A to someone who saves 25% (me) is way different than someone who doesn’t save at all and uses credit cards like free money.

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Do You Have a Financial Confidant?