More misleading mainstream media malarky

[urn2bfree]

I made headlines as a personal finance guru. Within months, I was drowning in debt


https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/29/personal-finance-guru-broke


This article is infuriatingly vague- it is mostly about the personal problems this poor woman went through, some of which may be related to her not actually doing anything that she claims in the first part of the article that she was doing.
Basically with regard strictly to her finances- she says: "I did a great job budgeting, LBYM, saved money for retirement and emergencies, etc. then yadda yadda yadda I was in ever increasing debt." There is literally NO EXPLANATION how she went from one to the other.

 

[pb4uski]

waste of electrons

 

[njhowie]

There is literally NO EXPLANATION how she went from one to the other.

A good part of the article provides explanation...it's attempted to be justified with one excuse after another.

1. Personal depression - brother died
2. Had to quit job due to the depression - loss of income
3. Convinced herself that she needed a change in living environment to fix things - $600 more per month
4. Having the third child during this was obviously not smart - more expenses
5. Not willing to cut back when it came to the kids
6. Emergency expenses came up

But hallelujah ... she now knows the names of a bunch of psychiatric diagnoses she can blame it on and feel so much better about things.

She got her $100 for writing the article. Seems eerily similar to the Financial Samurai approach. Make yourself out to be a financial guru. Fail at it. Then write about your failure as a financial guru.

 

[urn2bfree]

But actually the only thing that happened before she started going into debt is her brother died. No where does she explain how she went from tightly budgeted and saving $600 a month to the initial - "hey we are in debt for $3000." That is the piece that she glides over with yadda yadda yadda...she says something like "ironically I wasn't paying attention to our finances..." so ridiculous that this gets published and she ever considered herself a "guru."

 

[CardsFan]

Very weird article. No details on income or spending, from a "personal finance guru".

 

[MRG]

This is her real point. It's a poor title:


"I was a personal finance writer, and a series of traumatic events led me down a path of debt and near-bankruptcy. The answer to my financial crisis wasn’t a book on money management or personal finance program; it was discovering the names of my mental illnesses, saying them aloud, and then finding a way to live with them."

 

[Markola]

“More misleading mainstream media malarky”. Interesting word choice. Can the OP kindly identify a news outlet that is not “misleading” and shoveling us ever more “malarky”? I wish to subscribe to this font of truth.

 

[Al in Ohio]

“More misleading mainstream media malarky”. Interesting word choice. Can the OP kindly identify a news outlet that is not “misleading” and shoveling us ever more “malarky”? I wish to subscribe to this font of truth.

Except “The Guardian” is far from a mainstream media source. It’s in that group that is written for a segment of society that is not mainstream.

 

[Markola]

Not mainstream or just not in your bubble? Apparently, the OP disagrees with you as he called The Guardian “mainstream” when he cited it.

 

[CaliKid]

“More misleading mainstream media malarky”. Interesting word choice. Can the OP kindly identify a news outlet that is not “misleading” and shoveling us ever more “malarky”? I wish to subscribe to this font of truth.

Yup. Following as I'd like to know too.