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Of the million plus blogs on the net, the best bloggers may be those with the willingness and honesty to reveal their flaws to the world. These writers include the 'debt bloggers' who devote their bandwidth to disclosing their histories of compulsive credit card abuse, how they're changing their lifestyle so they can afford to pay these bills in full, and what they're doing to reform and spend responsibly. It's tough and brave stuff. Exposing and discussing debt and credit struggles flies in the face of what may be one of the great taboo subjects - money.
These blogs could be limited to discussion in BlogHer’s 'Business and Personal Finance' section, but this is a deeply personal issue, so debt blogging is also appropriate reading for the 'Life' category. After all, how we manage our money reflects the measurement of our self-esteem. Ruined credit equals injured self worth, and a crippled sense of self worth can lead to lying and hiding purchases and credit card statements. This is no different from alcoholics stashing their empty bottles. And, just as it is for alcoholics, lying and hiding along with the addictive behavior turns life into a living hell for chronic debtors.
The first step of recovery from any addiction is to look at the truth head on. The problem drinker stands up at the 12-step meeting and introduces herself as an alcoholic. The chronic debtor can do this too, but she must also print out an awful document - a spreadsheet with an accounting of the debt she incurred, quite often in the thousands of dollars. She has to look unflinchingly at the scary numbers, cut up her credit cards, pay off the accumulated bills and stick to a plan to stay out of debt forevermore. This is the path to redemption, and the debt blogger elevates this mission to higher ground, as breaking through and writng about the private shame online is a public act of grace and courage.
Last Sunday, the New York Times ran a front page article on the phenomenon of debt bloggers who "...have sprung up in recent years taking advantage of Internet anonymity to reveal to strangers fiscal intimacies the authors might not tell their closest friends." The Times interviewed a number of bloggers, including 'Tricia' of Blogging Away Debt, who puts everything on the line in her 'About' page:
I'm not proud to be in debt and I am rather ashamed. I shouldn’t have let things get as far as they have...I’ve decided to take all the steps that I need to take to finally become debt-free. I am going to use this blog to chart my progress as well as share information that I have learned along the way. I think debt is something that is crippling many of us. Once we get in debt, it is so hard to get out of.
Tricia, who writes anonymously, diligently blogs her efforts in cutting back expenses and living within her means. She chronicles her progress in a monthly recap and summarizes the amount of debt to date on her sidebar. As of this time, she has paid off $15,312 of a debt load of $37,614. Almost halfway there, and just in 12 months.
Tricia's ongoing success inspired this recent comment on her blog:
Yours was the website that really got us serious about dealing with our debt day to day.
The comment address leads to an arch and witty couple's blog, The Bizarro World Debt Elimination Freak Show - The Inspiring Quest of a Couple Trying to Murder Their Consumer Debt with The Ferociousness of a Cuban Cockfight.
The Bizarros, Basil and Bianca, kick off their first blog entry in their wry but earnest fashion:
This is the year-long story of two creative-types trying to pay off debt while trying to get kids through college. This is us with our guts out on the table. This is us looking to make a change, and looking to do it in the course of a year, and this is how we're going to do it. We have two primary goals. The first and most important is to pay off approximately $24,700 in debt. The second is to live a life free from fear, especially that cold, numbing special kind of financial fear. We will get into gory details about the debt, we will struggle, we will fight, our will will be shaken...We're fighting our way to zero...
The Bizarros are duking
