Anyone who thinks he knows everything there is to know about how to deal with money is either a professional working in the financial industry, someone with a MS or PhD in Finance or just somebody who is stupid enough to think that. Most people could never claim to have a monopoly of knowledge and experiences in dealing with finances such as investing, budgeting, banking, insurance and financial planning. But most, if not all of us, have our own experiences with these aspects of finance that we have learned from. These learning could have been possible through solving the problems we encountered or setting out on a project to improve our financial situation. They are valuable to us and could even be more useful if we share them to other people.
How Can Forums Help?
Forums in many sites in the internet have proven to be effective in this sharing of ideas and knowledge. Imagine if you have not heard about life insurance before and just realized that your family is vulnerable because of lack of protection. You may want to get the best policy out there that you can afford. If you will just seek an insurance agent, he will surely be biased to the products he is selling. You could end up buying a product that does not suit your needs at all. Or worse, it could be way more expensive than similar products from other companies. But if you join a forum with people who have made similar decisions before, you could seek their advice. You just go out there and post your question. Anyone with any knowledge or experience with life insurance could participate in the discussions to help you.
This is just one instance on how joining a forum could improve your knowledge and help you avoid having to learn some of the important things about dealing with money through painful mistakes. I understand that not all people are willing to share some of their ideas but it should not stop anyone from having a discussion with them since some ideas may not really be that big for a few people but could mean everything for others.
Forums vs. Social Networking Sites
But what about popular social networking sites such as Facebook, Google+ and Twitter? Aren’t they good enough medium to communicate with others about financial issues and experiences? Well, they could be. But these social networks are mostly used for entertainment. You can perhaps talk about some financial ideas with your friends on Facebook but you could never get the input of other people who you may not know but may have the relevant knowledge. Social networking sites are not as effective as forums when it comes to discussions of particular topics such as personal finance. Forums are better suited to handle conversations of people who want to learn and participate in.
Pera ko ‘to Forum is now live! Join now!
The forum that we have (which you can access through the link on the farthest right of the navigation bar) has just been started. I took great care to make sure that the site will not look cluttered like most of the forums I have seen. My purpose is to make it easier for users to find what they are looking for. The forum categories are clearly defined and should not overlap to ensure every discussion is where it should be. Clean and neat interface has the potential to prevent distractions from the most important content of the forum - i.e. the topics, posts and discussions.