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I wanted to blog about my financial status and was curious if somebody ever did that and couldn't find anything on google.

So the idea is to share on a monthly basis what I have on my bank account and what I spend each month. The data would be anonymized.

Example :
I am a 30 year old software engineer living in Zurich. Since I just finished my masters I have no savings and 20k of debt.
My rent is y Swiss francs and I pay x CHF my salary is xyz.

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    from "2 broke girls" to 1 broke boy? At some point you will leak info out that could very well identify you / help to identify you. The longer you do it, the greater this risk. Also, no one believes the numbers so would it really be worth it?
    – user3791372
    Commented Feb 26, 2017 at 21:11
  • Related question money.stackexchange.com/questions/74661/…
    – Dheer
    Commented Feb 27, 2017 at 3:37
  • 1
    As you have tagged identity-theft, there are quite a few cases where anonymized data have been linked back to a person. There are different ways of co-relating data to individual.
    – Dheer
    Commented Feb 27, 2017 at 3:39
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    @user3791372 - the numbers for getting started are the most believable, what's not to believe about what OP has written?
    – JTP - Apologise to Monica ♦
    Commented Feb 27, 2017 at 19:03
  • I used to be on a web site... I want to say at least ten years ago, where literally hundreds (thousands?) of people had their net worth and related info published, graphed over time, etc. Dunno if it's still up or not, and don't remember what it was called.
    – user12515
    Commented Jan 28, 2020 at 2:03

3 Answers 3

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Status alone shouldn't be a problem. A fellow blogger publishes a blogger list at Rock Star Finance where he lists nearly 1000 personal finance bloggers web sites. You can see that many of them publicly offer their numbers.

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What you need to consider is whether you are anonymous, or if friends and family will know it's you. "Hey Tev, you have no debt and already saved XXX francs? Can you lend me ZZ francs to buy....?" That is the greater risk. The potential larger risk for the higher worth people is that of targeted theft.

(Interesting you couldn't find this via search, the PF blogging community is large, mature, and continuing to grow.)

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    Those people who are stalking your finances to know whether they can ask you to borrow money are not your friends.
    – Criticizing Israel not allowed
    Commented Feb 27, 2017 at 5:56
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    @user20574: I can imagine a situation might come up where someone who's been looking to borrow some money might see such a blog, and think "funny, that sounds an awful lot like my neighbor/relative/friend, maybe I should just ask him", then asks the other person if he can borrow money. There doesn't need to be actual stalking involved...
    – user541686
    Commented Feb 27, 2017 at 7:08
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In addition to the risks posed in other answers, there is a very real risk of identity theft related to publishing your exact financial details. In a broader sense, any time something is assumed private but you've made it public, you risk losing the advantage of other people assuming those details are private.

For example, credit bureaus will sometimes take additional steps to verify your identity if certain conditions are true. One of the ways they do this is by asking about financial transactions that they would expect to be private. For instance, they may ask, "how much was the monthly payment for the mortgage you had on your house three years ago?" Generally they accept answers that are close, but not exact.

Obviously, if you publish transactional details like "I spent 1,036.14 on my mortgage this month" you are putting yourself at risk for people using that information to steal your identity.

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I think it's advisable to exercise a fair amount of caution when posting information about yourself online. With the advances in data aggregation efforts, information that would have been considered sufficiently anonymized in years past might no longer be sufficient to protect you from bad actors online.

For example, depending on which state, and even which county you live in, the county recorder's office may allow anyone with Internet access to freely search property records by your name. If they know approximately where you live (geolocation from the IP address that you use to post to a blog--which could be divulged if criminals compromised the blogging site) and your surname, they might be able to find your exact address if you own your home. If you have considerable wealth it could open you to targeted ransom attacks from organized criminals.

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  • Why would your blog be showing the IP address from which posts are made to all and sundry? If it does, route your traffic through Tor, or find a different blog platform...
    – user
    Commented Feb 28, 2017 at 15:10
  • @MichaelKjörling - I wouldn't expect that any blog shows that by default, but many websites track that information and can divulge it when compromised. Cyber crime is on the rise as an increasingly profitable part of criminal syndicates.
    – NL - SE listen to your users
    Commented Feb 28, 2017 at 15:24
  • Good point about breaches, but IMO not clear from your answer. You may want to adjust that part to make it clearer.
    – user
    Commented Feb 28, 2017 at 15:45
  • @MichaelKjörling - I left a lot of other things to be read between the lines too. I didn't want it to turn into a rant about cyber-security. However, I did edit that parenthetical aside.
    – NL - SE listen to your users
    Commented Feb 28, 2017 at 15:49
  • The downvoter should look at the recent phenomenon of "swatting" to see how trivially easy it is for a motivated attacker to send the cops to your door after a gaming spat.
    – NL - SE listen to your users
    Commented Mar 2, 2017 at 20:37

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