Without further ado, let’s continue on with the 4th Stage (featuring posts from the “Debt” and “Retirement Planning” 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.
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 July 2nd for this Stage!
Intermediate Sprint #1
Our Debt Free Story: Paying Off More than $147,000 in Debt (Story): Becoming debt free is totally doable, so long as you’re willing to do what it takes.
VERSUS
Things to Avoid with Quick Loans (Loans): Quick loans, sometimes referred to as payday loans, can either be an absolute life-saver in times of need, or if handled badly, a great burden. Take your time to research your fast loan options.
Intermediate Sprint # 2
The 3 Best Free Retirement Calculators (Calculators): Retirement calculators have an impossible job — predicting the future. This post discusses the pros and cons of retirement calculators, and gives tips for using them. It presents a detailed retirement scenario and puts a number of free calculators through their paces, then recommends the top three free calculators. Use retirement calculators regularly to optimize your near-term financial decision making, but remember that the future will inevitably turn out different than planned.
VERSUS
How Much Should I Save Toward Retirement If I’m Starting Late? (Late): Knowing how much you should save for retirement is critical. But what if you are late getting started? The longer you delay, the shorter the time that compound interest can do its magic on your savings.
Tour de France Daily Recap
The Tour de France in real life is going on right now with Stage 1, taking the riders 213 km from Porto-Vecchio up to Bastia on the island of Corsica. I’ll be sure to bring everyone an update on the action when the other Stage 4 posts go live later today!
***Photo courtesy of http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/LOTOJA_starting_line_2007.jpg
Debt Free Direct Tour de Personal Finance, Stage 4 – Debt and Retirement Planning Groups – Posts 25-28 is a post from: My Personal Finance Journey
