Regurgitated Posts

I try to write about things that personally affect me, so that I can comment from a first-person point of view. I’m not at the point where I feel I can give financial advice, so I write about more personal events related to my own financial world. And yet sometimes, I feel like I’m just regurgitating someone else’s post. For instance, I love reading GetRichSlowly.org (GRS). I find that, out of many of J.D’s  topics, I can relate to most of them, which may be one of the reasons I sometimes feel I am using these ideas to fuel my own ideas for topics. Then, as I browse some of my other favorite blogs, I find a similar theme running through them.  My guess is that either all of the bloggers I read relate to a singular issue that week or day, or we are all inspired by each other’s post and want to put our own spin on that particular topic of the moment.

The reason I bring this up, is that over the past couple of weeks, some recurring themes have popped up that I can personally relate to. Perhaps it’s the crappy economy that is creating this bubble of  similarities in lives of people I know or my own. Here are a few topics that I’ve read about lately on more than one blog, some are really well written, so if you don’t mind reading about a topic more than once, click away:

• Friend’s marriages disintegrating before my very own eyes: GRS recently wrote a post about this from a “what you should do before getting married” approach. On a personal level, my husband’s very old friend, dating back to the 7th grade, and his wife are having serious marital issues, mostly revolving around debt. To be honest, they have always had a rocky relationship. But this economy is pushing them over the edge and making them confront some of their problems. My husband fears they are heading toward the ultimate demise: divorce. It’s hard for us to clearly see this for them or any other couple, and we don’t wish this upon them and their adorable daughter. However, it doesn’t look good at this moment.
• Frugal gift ideas: Okay, this may seem like a no-brainer for finance blogs with holidays approaching: ways to save on gifts. I penned an article I hope to see published on Wisebread that discusses, in detail, how to save money on gifts and decorations. Lately, these ideas are all over financial blogs. I hope my article doesn’t get cut or published too late, all my ideas will  have already been spewn throughout the blog world!
• The Dave Ramsey approach to paying off debt: Paying off debt is a copious topic that can be taken from a multitude of approaches. However, I’ve lately been seeing a lot of articles talking about a Dave Ramsey approach to paying off debt: pay off the small card balances first, then focus on the huge, scary ones. Being a newbie to blogging, I only recently found out who Dave Ramsey is. So my next question is, did he just have another book published? Is this why he is hot all over the personal finance blogosphere?
• Fun and inexpensive things to do: First, I read a post on GRS, that lead me to write my own post with some ideas I felt I needed to add. Then, I saw an article on Wisebread focusing on a specific city listing fun or free things to do. Coincidence? I think not.

These are just a few of the recurring topics, posts, and ideas I’ve read lately, or borrowed and recreated to include my own point of view. I guess I should apologize to anyone who is tired of reading the same story or theme. To borrow a quote about borrowing ideas:

“There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.”
– Mark Twain, a Biography