New York Times reports how people are using blogs to provide self help debt management for themselves, and to help others.  The new perspective is that they are willing to tell about intimate financial issues online, even though they wouldn’t tell friends or family.

A blog called Poorer Than You (kgazette.blogspot.com) describes the financial doings of a 20 year old film school dropout.

(Typical post: Yesterday we ate lunch at Subway for a total of $8.00, and went grocery shopping … with a list!  And didn’t buy anything that wasn’t on it! )

On saveleighann.blogspot.com, Leigh Ann Fraley, 37, provides daily accounts of her escape from $19,947 in credit card debt.

I teach people how to get out of debt for a living, but I couldn’t do it myself until I started the blog,  said Ms. Fraley, who conducts seminars in personal finance for a bank in Northern California.  I started to write everything down, like, I saved 20 cents today by parking at a meter that still had time on it. I tell things I wouldn’t tell my family.  When she got out of debt in December, she said, he blog was the first people I told.

Source: Debtors Search for Discipline via Blogs – New York Times