Tour de Personal Finance, Stage 8, Round 2 – Posts 13-20

Without further a due, let’s continue on with the 8th Stage (the second Stage of the 2nd round of competition) 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).

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 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 (Sprints 1 and 2 of Stage 8 went live this morning, so be sure to cast your votes for those articles as well!):

• 6 Easy Ways To Get Advertisers for Your Blog or Website (Easy): A look at six easy ways to get advertisers for your blog or website.  This article gives a step-by-step description on what to do and how to sell yourself and your site.

• 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. 

  
   

• An Argument for Privatizing Social Security (Argument): Just as our country’s finances reach a critical point, Social Security is set to start failing. Social Security makes up 1/5 of our federal budget and is facing a huge deficit if changes aren’t made quickly.  This article argues that privatizing Social Security could be a permanent and sustainable solution.

• Will You Be Able to Retire on $1 Million? (Retire) Inflation is eroding the value of that $1 million nest egg; as the years march forward, there is a very real possibility that you will need much more than a $1 million nest egg to live the lifestyle you want. Here’s what you can do to stretch your nest egg further — even if you don’t have $1 million to retire on.

***Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/romyarlyn/2714690394/sizes/l/in/photostream/