When I first became interested in personal finance, I talked about it with everyone. I mean everyone! I talked about it with my boss, coworkers, friends, family, you name it! Now I’m not so sure I should be talking with everyone I meet about their personal finance issues. No worries, I’ll still talk about it here online for those of you who are interested!
After all, money is a touchy subject. Some people are jealous of other people’s finances, and some people just don’t really care to hear about the dangers of holding a credit card. Ha.
So right now, in this very post, I’m going to write a protocol for giving advice to other people regarding their financial situations. Here we go. I’m going to try and keep this simple and to the point.
When You Should Talk With Others About Their Situation
I think the best course of action is to only talk about someone else’s financial situation when they ask you specifically to talk about it. Now, there are two ways that I’ve found people “ask” their financial questions:
- They ask you a direct question about what you would do in their situation. In this case, I think it is okay to answer if you feel comfortable.
- They bring up their financial situation and don’t specifically ask you to address it. Here, I think it is best to keep quiet as much as you can. After all, they could just want your sympathy, not your advice. You could just say, “I’m sorry to hear you’re going through that.” While it may be tempting to fill the silence with your economic solutions, you probably should keep your mouth shut just in case they don’t want to hear it.
What do you think readers? I’d really like to hear your opinion on this. I’m asking! Leave a comment below and let’s get the conversation started.
Photo by Eleaf
I would have to agree with you there. Giving advice to someone who isn’t asking for it is just a waste of time, not to mention how that person may feel about you after you try to “fix” their lives. If they are just “venting” to you, they don’t want you to “fix” it, they just want you to listen. This, it seems, is the hardest thing to understand and accomplish as a man, and a blogger.
I agree with you Jeremiah . . . it’s difficult as a man not to try and FIX things!
In my 51 years of learning and 30 of them about finances, I feel I have — not maybe so much of an obligation to share but a true desire to briefly share what I have learned in a certain area about finances. Maybe that person came across your path because you had something they needed to hear. They can always toss the advice/recommendation–no hard feelings. I’d hate to think I was a young person struggling with discipline in an area and someone didn’t share with me cause they thought they should keep their mouth shut.
Good thoughts here Michelle. You make a great argument! But not everyone is as open to advice as you are – that’s the troubling thing! If something is life-threatening, I think we should let people know about it. But then again, I see people who smoke cigarettes all the time – should I let them know they are killing themselves?
These are difficult scenarios I know. I just wish we had more people who are open to advice like you are Michelle. Thanks for commenting as I struggle through these issues!