Money doesn't actually talk. We do.

Blogwrap: Why Personal Finance is Like Dieting, Poker

Two clever metaphors from our colleagues elsewhere in the personal-finance blogosphere this week:

At Zenhabits, among the 10 successful dieting principles that people can also apply to debt reduction are:

• Watch Less TV: It induces sloth and exposes you to potato-chip ads, true, but the ads also encourage, say, leasing a Mercedes (within your reach, really!). And wouldn’t watching would be so much more fun with a costly upgrade to high definition?

• Public Accountability: State your goals in your Weight Watchers meetings or post them here on FiLife; either way it motivates you to achieve them.

• Baby Steps: Without liposuction or a lottery ticket, reducing your heavy burdens will take some time.

The Blueprint for Financial Prosperity blog professes seven money lessons learned at the poker table, including:

• Bluffing: The lunatic across the table is putting on an act. And your next-door neighbors with the new boat are too if they had to take out a loan for most of the purchase price. No need to keep up with those Joneses.

• Don’t Go on Tilt: This is what happens when you let your emotions get the best of you and you start acting – and betting – irrationally. You never want to sell a poor-performing investment in a moment of market-swooning panic or make rash decisions about your career within a few days of getting fired.

– Ron Lieber