Creating a More Empathetic Personal Finance Community One Bad Takes Bracket at a Time with Matt Lane - youramericanmoney
Author: Michelle
Description: Matt Lane shares his Bad Financial Takes Brackets, his perspective on social good and we talk about his massive student loans
Date: 2021-08-16T09:00:00+00:00

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# Creating a More Empathetic Personal Finance Community One Bad Takes Bracket at a Time with Matt Lane

posted on 16 August, 2021

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If you’re a part of personal finance Twitter, you may have noticed an interesting phenomena-the Bad Financial Takes brackets run by Matt Lane. These are those financial takes that people drop on a regular basis on Twitter that make you think…hmmm? Why does this person think they way that they do? I thought it would be fun to have a conversation with Matt about personal finance Twitter, what is missing the personal finance space and what has surprised him about the reaction to this project.

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## Show Notes

- My guest Matt Lane introduces himself.
  - Attorney by day, writer and personal finance “personality”
  - Graduated with $250,000 in university debt and opted to work in public service
  - He decided to learn about money
  - During the pandemic he decided to walk away from his personal finance blog

- I ask if he has a financial philosophy. He has two different takes.
  - How do I succeed within the current system?
  - How do I work to make this system more fair and make “success” more accessible to a larger group of people?

- He acknowledges that he benefits from the system and how it’s built. And asks “How can we make what I have access to, to other people?”

- My question “Why would better access benefit someone who benefits from changing the system?”

- We get into how can helping other people help “me?”

- I ask a very tough question. “Outside of racism, why do you think in the US so many people will say “no!” to policy that would benefit them?”

- Matt shares very interesting insight into this issue

- We talk about the Financial Bad Takes brackets
  - Bad takes + Twitter Polls=the Worst Take

- The original bad take that started it all.

- The Virgin 10 is brought up LOL!

- The enthusiasm for the brackets caught him off guard

- What was surprising was how conversations (amongst people whose comments were shared) were coming up specific to bad takes that were included in the bracket.

- Financial pushback and encouraging deeper levels of empathy

- I admit that I find a lot personal finance boring and I get on my soapbox about why is so much content not addressing policy that impacts people’s money.

- Humor encourages conversation

- Matt changed to quarterly brackets with screenshots. He decided to cut off the identifying information so that participants are reacting to the content vs. the person.

- We talk about how influencers change over time

- A lack of empathy is a problem in our space and I wonder how we can foster empathy in our space.

- He acknowledges that some people are just never going to be empathetic and welcoming towards others

- Policy and how it impacts people’s money

- Matt became “Twitter famous” with the following tweet “I graduated with $250,000 in student loans and after many years of repayments I now owe $315,000” Reddit picked this up and the European respondents said “Your country is MESSED UP”

- I awkwardly try to ask what is happening with the student loans? Happily, he’s in the student loan forgiveness program and the loans will be forgiven in a couple of years.

- He advocates for the mass student loan forgiveness program…even though there will be no direct impact for him.

- I ask him what were some standout “Bad Financial Takes” in the last round of brackets. The last round had a lot of poor shaming takes.

- What’s next?

## Follow Matt

- @mattlanewrites

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#### Michelle

I am an obsessive foodie, but not self-righteous with it, love travel, meeting new people, helping you look good, and am freaked out by people who don't enjoying reading...something! Grab a Perrier, read my blog, feel free to drop me a line! Hope to hear from you soon.

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