I read a great article the other day that touched on this, "Life After Debt: What It's Like in the Third Stage of Personal Finance." Granted, the subject is personal finance and the author uses real numbers. He also has a very vocal audience with strong opinions. Basically he's really putting himself out there.
And after all his disclaimers and explanations, there are still people who just don't get what he's trying to convey, I think, very clearly. People who lash out in the comments about nothing. A long time ago I quit blogging for a year because my own skin wasn't thick enough. The emails people would send me, just horrible stuff. And I wonder what compels me to keep posting words and pictures linked to myself that could linger out there forever? A sickness, maybe?
Anyway, the subject of the article is what I found really interesting. There's so much information now about how to pay down debt and how to live frugally, that nobody really talks about what's next. I love the article because it gives us a glimpse into what it's like to be comfortable. To have planned well and have choices. To show what happens when you finally don't have to live paycheck to paycheck anymore.
Hardly anyone writes about that. Getting out of debt is the sexy stuff, building and maintaining wealth is the boring part -- unattainable until you attain it, and then you're afraid to talk about it because you don't want to rub it in.
I expect I'll never fully work out the balance of private/public. For now I'm just glad all the angry commenters have been drawn to the bigger blogs and have left me my little soapbox in the corner.
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