In the United States, talking about your finances is taboo. Often a subject of arguments and differences, we’re taught to keep our financial information and thoughts to ourselves. Luckily, FiLife is looking to change that and make talking about finance an open and two-way relationship.

FiLife – a joint venture between IAC and Dow Jones – is a community that connects people with personal financial questions with experts who have the answer. Recently ranked as the #1 most innovative financial company and #27 overall by Fast Company, FiLife is providing a venue for people across a wide-array of spaces to get answers to all their financial questions – basic or complex.

In an industry that’s heavily regulated and typically conservative, FiLife offers a credible solution to the glaring absence of education and awareness within the financial industry.

“Essentially, we’re where healthcare was a few years ago. It was a taboo subject that you didn’t think about bringing up in a social setting,” Adam Wiener, general manager and executive editor, said. “There’s an obvious need for this resource, so we’re fishing where the fish are.”

Another key to FiLife’s success (they’ve gone from 14,000 monthly visitors in February 2009 to over 3 million) is the fact that they don’t necessarily have to play by the same rules and regulations that bound financial institutions. That’s not to say that FiLife houses fly by the night content. FiLife has managed to form a number of strategic relationships and the depth of their contributors provide credibility. It’s this vast array of resources that has allowed the site to become the number four personal-finance Web site according to com-Score.

“With the amount of content out there, we needed to form strategic relationships in order to give FiLife credibility,” Wiener said. “Large financial institutions have to deal with regulation and jump through hoops in order to get stuff online. We have the ability to respond quicker and to a broader range of topics.”

In a true testament to innovation, FiLife is continually looking to add value to its current community and potential participants. FiLife is committed to using their open API to allow other financial institutions and partners to utilize the incredible amount of content and resources currently on the FiLife site, and integrate into their own Web site. Additionally, FiLife is looking at creating the ability for financial institutions to pull content from FiLife and use those resources on outside destinations.

“Being interactive is why we’ve found the success we have,” Wiener said. “We’re committed to being social and utilizing the various platforms out there to continue to add value and expand our reach.”

As mentioned above, there’s a wealth of knowledge and resources out there when it comes to financial advice. Clearly, large financial institutions haven’t stepped up to the plate of financial education. FiLife is a space where people can gather and develop their own profile of personalize content. Who knows, maybe down the road talking about your finances will be as common and accepted as conversing about the weather!