Debt Free Direct Tour de Personal Finance, Stage 12 – Frugal Living Group – Posts 49-56

Without further ado, let’s continue on with the 12th Stage (the last Stage of the 2nd Round of the event, featuring posts from the “Frugal Living”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.

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 10th for this Stage!

Intermediate Sprint #1

• It Pays to Have Your Small Claims Case on a Court Television Show (Television): Court reality television shows love to arbitrate stereotypical cases to get their paid audience members in an uproar (like the snot-nosed teenager who takes his friend’s car for a joyride and crashes or the girlfriend who cheated on her boyfriend and his credit card). It turns out that these people we love to giggle at might just be smarter than the rest of us. If you are willing to have your case tried in front of a national audience (not to mention people like Judge Judy), then read on to find out the rewards that await you.

VERSUS

• Could You Live on Minimum Wage? (Wage): 4.4 Americans live on minimum wage. SPENT is a game designed to show the tough choices made everyday by the working poor.

Intermediate Sprint # 2

• Financial Lessons Learned from The Bachelor (Bachelor): I’m a fan of the TV show, The Bachelor, on ABC. After a few episodes, I realized that  not only is the show about finding love, it can teach us about investing, debt and general personal finance as well. So what financial lessons has The Bachelor taught you?

VERSUS

• Why It May Cost You More When It’s Free (Free): We’re all dazzled by the word “free,” but have you ever stopped to think about the costs tied to getting something for free? Free shipping or free items when your purchase reaches a certain dollar amount is great–if you’re already planning to spend that amount of money, but when you’re not? And what about all of the extra “free” stuff you’re collecting that you really don’t need? There’s psychology behind our strong urge to get something for free–even if we don’t need it–and there are ways we can combat our irrational thinking.

Tour de France Daily Recap

The Tour de France in real life continues today with Stage 9, the second high mountains stage, taking the riders 165 km from Saint-Girons to Bagnères-de-Bigorre. After a brilliant performance and win yesterday for Chris Froome at the mountain top finish at Ax-3-Domaines, he will be looking to defend the yellow jersey today. 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.