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The 2011 Tour de Personal Finance has been an absolute 100% success (far beyond anything I could have imagined!). A big thanks goes out to everyone that has participated in the Stages and to the hundreds of voters who have stopped by to support their favorite authors/articles.
Later this week, I’ll write up a Tour de Personal Finance recap, post-race show, and awards ceremony to talk about what happened this year and how I envision the event growing in the coming years. But, that’s enough of that commentary for now!
Without further ado, let’s continue on with the final, 17th Stage (the final championship sprint) of the 2011 My Personal Finance Journey Tour de Personal Finance (to follow all of the action, click on the Tour de Personal Finance category link and scroll down to read all the posts involved in this subject).
There are only 2 blogs/posts remaining in the 2011 Tour, so the competition should be quite interesting in this Stage! To view the most up-to-date brackets of the competition, click the following link –2011 Tour de PF Bracket
Going along with Tour de France cycling tradition, I’ve listed each competition within each stage as an “intermediate sprint” (one post versus another) along with the description provided by the blog author when the post was submitted.
Also, if applicable, I will give a brief description of the stage of the Tour de France that took place the same day as the competition.
How to Vote
You can vote for the one article (since there’s only one intermediate sprint today) you’d like to see proceed in the Tour by commenting in the comments section below and telling which are your favorites.
I’ve listed a keyword after each post title to make it easy to vote (as a made-up example, you can just comment: Sprint 1: Mutual; Sprint 2: 401k, etc.) Be sure to comment which one you like the best out of each set of two! Criteria for the best article is completely up to you, but you can use these factors as a guide: 1) post of your favorite blogger, 2) most interesting post, 3) most thought-provoking post, 4) most unique post, or 5) most actionable post.
Here is today’s competitions:
Voting will continue until July 28th for this Stage!
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This isn’t your grandparents’ recession (Grandparents):
Ever since the recession began I think there’s WAY too much blaming of the victims. I’m good and sick of hearing pundits grumble about how lazy and soft Americans have become, and how we ought to take a few lessons from the Great Depression. Here’s the thing: The world was a different place back then. Heaven knows I’m no apologist for slackers, credit-card spendthrifts or people who won’t take anything but the “right” job, but a lot of the advice our elders offered/modeled isn’t relevant today. Plenty of folks are in big trouble not because they’re lazy, but because of complex personal, local, national and global economic issues.
- If I Had a Million Dollars, I’d Go Into Debt (Debt): What would I do if I won a million dollars? This post describes how I’d invest every last penny, scrutinizing tax benefits, risk, returns, real estate, and why I would go into debt — yes, I would go into debt — if I were a millionaire. And don’t just take my word for it: Einstein backs me up, and so does third-world poverty theory. Read this post to find out more.
Tour de France Daily Recap
Today is also the last Stage for the riders in the 2011 Tour de France, with the riders traveling 160 km from Creteil to the Champs-Elysees in Paris.
Barring a major accident out on the open road, the Australian, Cadel Evans, will end the day as the overall winner of the 2011 race.
Cadel took the race lead by doing a consistent ride throughout the high mountain stages and then throwing down the gauntlet with a STELLAR final time trial yesterday in Grenoble to take the yellow jersey only the day before Paris!
Alberto Contador, the all-around favorite for overall victory this year, came up lacking in the final mountain stages of this year’s race. In my opinion, Contador most likely was the best rider in this year’s Tour de France, but since he doesn’t focus his training solely for victory in the Tour (he wants to win races in May and September as well), he wasn’t in peak form. This just makes me realize and appreciate how hard and rare it is to find a rider such as Lance Armstrong who can win the biggest bike race in the world for 7 years IN A ROW without making a single mistake. It really is a testament to Lance’s ability as a rider.
***Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/petitbrun/5664890889/lightbox/
