Debt Free Direct Tour de Personal Finance, Stage 11 – Saving and Psychology Groups – Posts 41-48

Without further ado, let’s continue on with the 11th Stage (the 2nd Round of the event, featuring posts from the “Saving/Investing” and “Psychology of Money” categories of articles submitted) of the 2013 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).

We greatly appreciate Debt Free Direct for being the title partner of the 2013 event and for all their great support. If you’re interested in learning more about the help and advice Debt Free Direct offers to people in debt or their money-saving tips on how to prevent building up debt, click here.

To view the most up-to-date brackets of the competition, click the following link – 2013 Debt Free Direct 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 (or that has happened since the previous Stage of) the competition.

How to Vote

You can vote for the two articles (one from each intermediate sprint)  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 are today’s competitions:

Voting will continue until July 9th for this Stage!

Intermediate Sprint #1

• Why an Early Start Makes All the Difference  (Early): I started to work, save and invest early, and it has allowed me to retire from the corporate world at age 29. This post shows how important it is to get an early start in your finances, and how much it would cost you to get to the same point if you start 5 or 10 years later. If you are off to a late start and should have started yesterday, it is not too late to get on track, but today is the best day to take control of your finances.

VERSUS

• Are We Headed For Another Great Depression? (Depression): America’s economy has been struggling for nearly five years now, and there’s a division among experts and laypeople alike as to whether this is a crisis that we’re on our way out of, or if the worst is yet to come.  Are we headed for the 21st century version of the Great Depression?  How would we know if we were?  What are the warning signs?  And what would happen to America if another large scale depression hit our shores?

Intermediate Sprint # 2

• My Life Insurance Mistake (Mistake): Get an inside look at my encounter with the seedy underbelly of the life insurance sales world. Learn from my mistakes so that when the time comes you can avoid getting suckered into a bad deal.

VERSUS

• 7 Habits of Wealthy People (Habits): Have you ever wondered what it takes to be wealthy? If you want to be rich then you need to imitate successful people. Here are 7 habits of wealthy people that will help you start building wealth today!

Tour de France Daily Recap

The Tour de France in real life continues today with Stage 8, the first high mountains stage, taking the riders 121 miles from Castres to Ax 3 Domaines. The race finishes at the summit of Ax3, so it should be the first big challenge for the contestants for overall victory. I’ll be sure to bring an update on the race results once it finishes in the Sprints later tonight.

A Quick Reminder On Prizes For The 2013 Competition

The 2013 edition of the Tour de PF will be doubly exciting because we have some very nice cash prizes to give away to the winner and also to charity to continue helping the community.

These will be as follows:

• Yellow Jersey (1st Place) Winner of the 2013 Tour de Personal Finance will receive $100 cash via PayPal.
• In addition, the Yellow Jersey Winner will also get to decide what charity they want me to donate $700 to in honor of their efforts/victory.