Debt Free Direct Tour de Personal Finance, Stage 1 – Career Group – Posts 5-8

Without further ado, let’s continue on with the 1st Stage (featuring posts from the “Job/Career” category 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.

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. 

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 June 29th for this Stage!

Intermediate Sprint #1

• How to Kick Unemployment Depression in the Ass (Kick): Ever been unemployed? Ever been depressed because you’re unemployed? Without a doubt, unemployment is the most depressing thing that’s ever happened to me. Kick that depression in the ass by reminding yourself you are still awesome! This post also includes guidance to what money you might be entitled to.

VERSUS

• Confessions of a Professional Blogger: Why I Don’t Have High Paying Freelance Jobs (Confessions): I’ve been raising my rates, but I’m still not in the “big money” range as a professional blogger. Here’s why I don’t have high paying freelance jobs.

Intermediate Sprint # 2

• How to Become Self-Employed Like These Top Bloggers (Bloggers): Everyone dreams of becoming self-employed sometimes.  These top bloggers did it!  Hear their stories and see how they set themselves up for financial success post-employment.

VERSUS

• How To Handle Being Denied A Promotion After My Boss Screwed Me Over (Promotion): Sometimes, life throws you curve balls, and this year my boss struck me with an unexpected hard ball right in the gut. Find out how I reacted to the emotional and bitter truth when I didn’t make the cut for a promotion I really wanted. Then learn 10 key tips on how to handle being denied a promotion that I picked up from my experience.

Tour de France Daily Recap

Unfortunately, the Tour de France doesn’t start in real life until this Saturday, June 29th (we had to get started a little early this year due to the larger number of entries!).

This year’s Tour features some really cool things for us to look forward to though.

• First, it is the 100th edition of the event.
• Second, the Tour will start from the island of Corsica, the only time in the race’s history that it has visited that Department.
• Third, it will be the first time since the 2003 that the event will take place entirely on French roads (no visits to neighboring countries).
• Finally, the race features a Stage in which the famous climb of Alpe d’ Huez (one that I’ve actually done myself, and can attest to how hard it is!) will be climbed not once, but twice. I’m not quite sure how the logistics will work out with that, but it should be very entertaining to watch!

***Photo courtesy of http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/Corsica_(Landsat_7).png