Financial Advice! from American Express...

That's right, American Express and your friendly conglomerate Federated Media are offering a "fun, fresh" personal finance website for young adults called Currency. 25 real personal finance writers will post articles. There are 6 online mini course modules offered "in conjunction with Wharton." You get "currency stars" for reading articles and taking courses, and once you get 100, you'll get a gold star! For serious.

This is akin to tobacco companies being forced to tell kids that smoking is baaad. A wonderful PR opportunity - see everybody, we're doin' our part! We samaritans at Amex just want to teach, lead, and inform. And gather data. Precious, precious data. Oh, and there's a tiny link at the bottom left of the site that says "Not a cardmember? Find out how you can become one."

There's also an iphone app for foursquare users: "Social Currency is the app that lets you shop with all your friends, whether they're down the street or across the country. Tell them what you're buying, where you're finding it, how much you're spending, and what you want. Even better-find out what your friends are buying, too."

And by friends they mean American Express and Federated Media. Hm. How about this FAQ:

Q: What’s a Want?
A: That's like a Purchase you haven’t bought: tell your friends what you're looking for and where.

Redefining a "want" as something you just haven't bought yet. And here I thought that Financial Education 101 is to figure out the difference between needs and wants so you stop buying lots of wants.

Also, many of the articles are very short (to account for Generation Y's frenetic attention span) and also inane. I uncovered important tips such as: "If you do own an espresso machine, dust it off and locate the manual." How very wise and thrifty. In a mini-article called "Secrets of Extreme Savers," it is revealed that you can automate your bill payments. (!gahjustblewmymind) "You don't have to be the queen of coupons (or the king of ramen noodles) to save." Thanks for that hilarious tidbit, Jeremy Vohwinkle (*I didn't make up that name). However I am beginning to envision that the king of ramen noodles would be a good, cheap Halloween costume, something like the flying spaghetti monster.

Ok enough. Obviously "Currency" enrages me. Getting your financial advice from a credit card company is like getting your high school health curriculum from Burger King. Even with a whole slew of financial writers signed on and this partnership with Wharton, this is still sponsored by American Express and you better believe they're slurping up all the data about your "wants" on foursquare. I am always angry when corporations pretend to lend you a kindly hand.

What are your favorite non-corporate personal finance websites and blogs? Leave em in the comments. There's gotta be something between Currency and the FDIC's fuddy-duddy Money Smart for Young Adults in which a woman called "Penny Cash" reads aloud how to use the menu buttons for 10 minutes. Look, we know how to use the internet, FDIC.