My mother and father were married in 1976, when the country was heading into an era of gasoline shortages, governmental insanity, and worthless currency. As luck would have it, my newly married parents were facing this nightmare of daily living unarmed: my father was a high school teacher, and my mother had to work various odd jobs to balance out the family income. After a long and arduous battle, my parents did achieve financial security, but as I observe the nation’s current political and economic climate, I can see that young adults ready to begin their new lives are plunging towards disaster. The current generation needs to be educated about financial matters, and fortunately for us, the blog “Budgets are Sexy” (http://www.budgetsaresexy.com/) informs and inspires youths about fiscal matters in terms that they can relate to.
“Budgets are Sexy” is able to successfully do something that, hitherto, seemed impossible: make finances interesting. The language is very clear cut and appealing to young adults. Words such as “sexy” and “bad a$$” (spelled with the dollar signs) are commonplace.
As with all blogs, users can post comments about the articles and track previous entries. The site offers advice on how to become rich quickly, how to budget (it even features a few templates that can be downloaded as Excel spreadsheets), and ultimately, the best way to spend a sizeable fortune. In each of these major sections, the recurring financial terms are defined so that the user can clearly follow along and develop the appropriate technical vocabulary.
While “Budgets are Sexy” offers some very sound advice, the blog does have its fair share of problems. On the disclosure tab, the author of the blog admits that he or she (the name is “J Money”) is not an official financial consultant in any capacity, or an English major for that matter (the ridiculous amount of grammatical errors gives that away).
The site is well built, but there are occasional links that take the user to an external page, and returning to the blog is a trifle challenging.
Ever since I was a child, my mother kept praying, “I hope that you and your sister never have to worry about money.” It wasn’t until I began college that I realized exactly how serious personal finances are. When my mother and father began their new lives together in a turbulent nation, they had no recourse to aid them in accounting. Our nation’s political and economic history seems to be repeating itself, but thankfully, our generation has something that our parents’ did not: the Internet.
Blogs such as “Budgets are Sexy” are outlets that can make a difference between success and failure. While the site has its issues, I think that we owe it to ourselves to look through this and sources like it. My overall score for this page is a solid A.