Really dumb personal finance writing

Yvette Kantrow, executive editor of TheDeal.com, writes Friday about how personal finance reporting has lowered itself to depths never seen before.

Kantrow writes, “But a funny thing happens when you try to dumb down finance to make it palatable and useful. It becomes, well, dumb. If you tuned into Fox Business last week, you caught Susan ‘Stop the Insanity’ Powter (remember her?) urging people to exercise and, of course, buy her book; MainStreet.com told readers how to take a page from Drew Barrymore and deal with a hit-and-run accident.

“Now we don’t mean to pick on Fox or MainStreet.com (OK, maybe just a little). It’s hard to get people to tune into or read about money, especially when everyone’s gloomy. But the WSJ, of all places, provides a classic example of personal finance’s slippery slope to cluelessness: Terri Cullen‘s ultrachatty ‘Fiscally Fit’ column Wednesday on her family’s decision to fire its lawn-care service and buy — the drama! — a lawn mower instead.

“It’s a first-person account (natch) of Terri’s bickering with her husband, Gerry, over how to best care for their one-acre lawn (one acre!) in New Jersey. Gerry wants to buy a riding lawn mower; Terri worries about how that will interfere with Gerry’s summer boating schedule; we wonder how much money this couple has. We learn about Gerry’s ineptitude as a comparison shopper (and how Terri saves the day); we watch son Gerald hang around the garage; we hear Terri predict Gerry will give up mowing next year. By the time we finish, we’re still trying to figure out exactly what financial lesson we just learned and why Gerry puts up with Terri.”

Read more here.