In a Yahoo Finance article Hanging with the money crowd, they talk about how weight gain is contagious in social networks, a concept backed by New England Journal of Medicine as well as Weight Watchers.  But does that also mean that other traits and values are also "contagious?"

There are plenty of old adages about like attracting like, and "if you want to make money, you should hang out with people with money."

Yahoo Finance quotes Duke University sociologist Lisa Keister, author of Getting Rich: America's New Rich and How They Got That Way, "It's really a question of how other people's values affect your values. The people around you affect how you approach education, family, consumption, when you get married and where you go to school. Those things affect wealth."

The article goes on to say that like-minded social and family networks (real world and online) are effective for all kinds of goals, such as paring down debt and learning about money management. Sites like Wesabe, are good at offering tools for understanding the aggregate of ones liabilities and assets, as well as bringing people together to learn and set financial goals.

But if you want to make money, and lots of it, would it make sense to focus on expanding your social network (both online and real-world) to include people with the same goals and ambitions?  It looks to be true, especially if you are actively driving towards similar goals, and are willing to team up and share what works and what doesn't with your network.

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