Friends are often a food source of advice for information. If you extend your network of friends then you may get more advice.

For those who are looking for information about money, the newest trend in networking is social financial networking.

If you have a problem, you can post your concern to the community and then others will give you advice about how to handle your situation. With social financial networking, people are solely restricted to financial issues. One such site is Wesabe. The site offers good information but you have to sign up to get to see some of the advice features.

You may not tell someone exactly how much you make but online there is always someone out there who has a similar problem so if you search for a solution you can usually find it.

Wesabe has a community feel and you can participate in discussions with others where you can gain information or just make a public proclamation of your financial downfalls of goals. If you just want to lurk on the site, it is difficult to get any good information from just lurking so you do have to sign up. That is a big drawback if you just want information and don’t want to join.

Once you go to the site and if you set up a goal, whether it is to get out of debt or save for something big, add a couple of tags and you have information that will help you achieve your goal. I entered a long term savings goal for a world cruise and after submitting my goal I had a few dozen tips related to saving in general which were offered by my fellow Wesabe members.

Geezeo works on a similar premise but features a few more bells and whistles. You also can navigate and search more of the site before deciding whether or not you really want to join. My personal preference between the two would be Geezeo because of some of the features that were interesting to me such as money confessions and the variety of groups on the site.

Social personal finance is the latest trend in online financial management. Financial sites have community forums and allow posters to start new threads. But if you took away the main focus of the business (e.g., trading) as in the case of Zecco, you have a collaborative education area. Anyone who signs up and abides by the rules of the community can participate in the discussion.

Instead of going to someone who doesn’t really know you outside of your comfort zone you can seek out the information you want and use the advice or not. You may only have a small circle of friends who you want to discuss finances with but once you join a community of people that grows daily you can always learn something new or gain new insight as to how personal finances affect your life.