Tour de Personal Finance 2012 – Final Championship Sprint on the "Parisian Champs-Élysées" of Personal Finance

The 2012 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, 18th Stage (the final championship sprint) of the 2012 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).

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE ON PRIZES FOR THE COMPETITION

As I mentioned in the introduction post for the 2012 Tour de PF, I have reserved the reader portion of my 10% monthly blog income give back event for both June and July as prize money to the Yellow Jersey winner and runner-up/second place podium finisher. The Yellow Jersey winner will also select a charity of their choice to receive the charity portion of the 10% monthly blog income give back.

At the time that I mentioned these prizes, I did not yet know the exact quantities that they would be. However, I now have everything calculated, and the prizes will be as follows:

• Prize to Yellow Jersey Winner – $75.00
• Amount that will be given to a charity chosen by the Yellow Jersey Winner – $123.05 
• Prize to 2nd place podium finisher – $50.00

• Should You Charge Your Boomerang Kids Rent? (Boomerang): It’s no longer a given that kids will move out on their own when college ends. In fact, there’s a term for this group – Boomerang Kids. Should you charge rent to these boomerang kids?

• Money For All Seasons I: Income, Spending, and Age (Seasons): Using the four seasons – spring, summer, autumn and winter – as a metaphor for the four different stages in our lives, I have set out some age related expectations regarding income, expenditure, investments and cash-flow. It is a common sense way to illustrate how our financial situation today carries into our future and that it is never late to change one’s financial trajectory.

Wiggins took the race lead by doing a consistent ride throughout the high mountain stages and then throwing down the gauntlet with two STELLAR individual time trials to take the yellow jersey over his main rivals! The second place rider in the race is over 3 minutes behind him overall and is his own teamate! Cadel Evans, the pre-race favorite, finishes almost 15 minutes down! Quite a collapse!

George Hincapie looks set to finish his 18th ever Tour de France, which I believe is a world record for most Tour finishes. Peter Sagan has pretty much clinched the green jersey competition, and Thomas Voeckler is ten points ahead of his nearest rival in the King of the Mountains competitions. So, those jerseys are pretty much wrapped up, and there shouldn’t be too many surprises on today’s Stage.

***Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/59920447@N04/7616350830/sizes/l/in/photostream/