As more people face a personal financial crisis during this economic recession, many will search the Internet for information, products and services which may hopefully help them to solve their money problems.

For the purpose of this article, we thought that it would be interesting to simulate the scenario of a typical individual (such as yourself) searching for answers to their financial crisis on the web.

We are assuming that you’ve just lost your job, can’t pay the mortgage, used up all your savings and don’t have cash to pay the heating bills. As a result, you’re tense, anxious, scared and desperately needing to find a way out of this rut. You’ve heard that you can find anything on the Internet, so you charge online with the hope that you’re going to find something.

One of the problems of searching for stuff online, is that you need to know what you’re searching for and how to search for it. If you venture out without a plan of what you should be looking for, you will spend hours learning interesting new things, but at the end of your session, it’s unlikely that you will have the answers to your financial problems.

So, before starting out, it’s important to make a list of keywords covering some of the potential subjects which may help you handle your personal financial crisis. This is the list we came up:

1. personal financial crisis
2. save money
3. earn money
4. consolidate debt
5. avoid foreclosure
6. get a loan
7. find a job
8. pay medical bills

Personal Financial Crisis

The first phrase is perfect in describing our financial position and a natural place to start. We are ideally looking for a thorough guide which relates to our crisis and offers tips which lead to actionable solutions for our state of near bankruptcy.

After 15 minutes of going through the first 3 pages of results in the search engines for “personal financial crisis”, we were indeed no closer to an answer. Most of the websites from the search results had some sort of information related to personal financial crisis but none of them addressed our core needs.

This is the problem about trying to find good free online financial advice. You have to know where to go as the search engines do not always lead you to the best resources.

Here’s a list of the top results and how it doesn’t really help our dire situation:

(1) When Credit Problems Become a Personal Financial Crisis
http://ezinearticles.com/?When-Credit-Problems-Become-a-Personal-Financial-Crisis&id=1153087

The title from this first result looks interesting but if you’ve come across content from article submission sites (which this was, as evident from the domain ezinearticles.com) you’ll know that it doesn’t have much depth. We took a look anyway.

The article seemed to be fair, highlighting a number of issues which were similar to our predicament, but that was about all it did. At the end of the article, there was a link at the bottom from the author which linked to a site called ‘Solving-Credit-Problems’. Wow, that’s exactly what we need! We click on the link.

SolvingCreditProblems.com is quite an informative site which covers a wide range of subjects related to credit problems such as foreclosure, debt settlement, personal bankruptcy and more. It provide useful tips but did not offer any direct solution to our problems. For example, it shares about what you should and should not do in a debt consolidation but does not go on to suggest some good sites and providers. Overall, not bad, but not what we require.

(2) Causes of Financial Crisis
www.mastercard.com/us/personal/en/learningcenter/debtknowhow/debtwarningsigns/financialcrisis.html

This is a link to an article in the learning center of Mastercard’s website. We may get some useful info here, but it’s unlikely that a credit card company is going to solve our crisis.

Upon entering the site, there was some general advice on what to do in a personal financial crisis but not much else.

(3) Avoiding Personal Financial Crisis
http://family-budgeting.blogspot.com/2006/10/avoiding-personal-financial-crisis.html

This is a personal blog by Bill Nadraszky who share’s good tips to avoid financial problems. Again useful, but not directly helping us.

(4) The Financial Crisis’s Sacrificial Lambs
www.meshio.com/2009/02/the-financial-crisiss-sacrificial-lambs/

Yes, we feel like a sacrificial lamb now, perhaps this article was going to truly relate and provide answers. We took a look and found a short post featuring the Top 25 People to blame for the financial crisis. Interesting, but not solving our cash problems.

(5) 5 errors to avoid in a financial crisis
www.bankrate.com/brm/news/debt/20050524b1.asp

The fact that the brief description in Google stated that this article was from May 2005 was not encouraging. Any article addressing our needs should ideally be quite recent so that it can cover the benefits from the Economic Recovery Stimulus Package. We clicked and found another general article. Good content but much of the same again.

(6) Take Control of Your Financial Crisis
www.credit.com/products/loans/Facing-a-Financial-Crisis.jsp

This was by far the best link so far. The guide is detailed and provides clear steps which you can take to manage your personal financial crisis. It would have been good to see more links to suggested financial service providers.

(7) Making a Better Life: Preparing for the Post-Katrina Personal Financial Crisis
www.brookings.edu/opinions/2005/1018communitydevelopment_lee.aspx?rssid=new+orleans

An article directly related to Katrina from 2005. No answers here.

(8) Twentyhood
www.twentyhood.com/2008/11/24/college-sophomore-fixes-personal-finance-crisis-or-does-he/

A blog post talking about teaching personal finance in high school to solve personal financial crisis issues. Interesting.

(9) Books on Business & Economics
http://www.alibris.com/search/books/subject/Business%20Economics%20Personal%20Finance%20Money%20Management

Books may help, but not now, we need immediate solutions.

(10) financial crisis- Personal Finance Forums
http://www.savingadvice.com/forums/personal-finance/6719-financial-crisis.html

Looks promising but it turns out to be a 2005 forum post by someone claiming to be in a personal financial crisis because he can’t get a loan to buy a piece of land.

Hardly the same as not being able to pay your gas bills!