"I'm 30k in debt brought on by my depression and anxiety. My biz has slowed down and my husband has no idea I owe all this money."

"None of my coworkers or friends know that I'm sitting on $300k of savings at 28 years old."

"I am so broke American Express called and said 'Leave home without it!' "

Money used to be a taboo subject. Not anymore, thanks to Web sites such as Facebook and MySpace, which have created a generation willing to talk about anything and everything online. Several new sites are incorporating that impulse into the world of money, blending social networking with personal finance.

"It comes from the whole MySpace generation. Once people become comfortable being social online, it extends into other areas, such as personal finance," said Ryan Williams, co-founder of NetworthIQ, which allows people to publicly keep track of their assets.

The online communities focus on different aspects of personal finance, from investing to budgeting to borrowing and lending money. But the founders of the sites all say they are trying to accomplish the same thing: to get people to make better financial decisions.

Too many people in their 20s and 30s have become addicted to their debit and credit cards, no longer carrying cash in favor of the convenience of plastic, said Peter Glyman, who co-founded Geezeo about a year ago.

That has made them "detached from their finances," he said. "They're not balancing a checkbook, which in some ways forces people to look more closely at their finances. It creates a problem for the consumer in that they're becoming further removed, but it allowed products like ours to get them closer."

Sites such as Geezeo and www.Wesabe.com, which launched in November 2006 and has about 100,000 users, act as online versions of Quicken or Microsoft Money, allowing people to upload their bank and credit card information to track their spending. On Geezeo, users can also set goals such as "Reduce spending by X" and "Save $2,000 in an Emergency Fund" and encourage each other to accomplish them.

Similarly, on Wesabe, members can join groups to share strategies. Want to find a way to eat good food without going broke? Join "Frugal Foodies." Worried that you're spending too much on your pet? Maybe "Can you Afford Your Pets?" is the group for you. A "tips" section has lively discussions on such topics as "How I reduced my phone bill from $100 to $17 a month."

Although being able to open up about finances is not a bad thing, financial planners say users should be leery about taking advice from people they don't know. Most participants on these personal finance sites do not reveal their names.

"What I always tell people before you take someone else's advice: Make sure you know what qualifies them to give you the advice ... ," said Karen Schaeffer, president of Schaeffer Financial in Rockville, Md. "There's value in conversation because it makes you think about the issue, but nobody really knows you. Or you don't know that person. If you really knew them, you'd realize: 'Whoa. That person is worse off than I am. Why am I listening to them?' "