As you’re probably aware, I entered the Spendster.org Second Chance contest with my story about buying track shoes. As you can see in the video above, it was a ridiculous purchase and honestly one of the dumbest things I could have bought. Why am I so stupid?!?!
Except it wasn’t that dumb because it helped me win $250! At least I think it did. The contest was supposed to end yesterday (11/4) and the top 100 win cash prizes. I was sitting in 51st place as of 9:38 CT on 11/4, but I haven’t seen anything on their site about the contest being over, so who knows!?
It also helped me write a pretty darn funny song, which (as always) is available to download free here or on the Downloads page. I recommend putting this one on your “sensual date night” playlist.
Thanks to all of you voting and sharing my link with your social networks, I got over 100 votes in just two days. I wish I had known about the contest on the first day because I truly believe if I had the extra three days and was close enough to the top, my awesome readers would have found a way to make me number one! Thousandaires are the best!
So to thank everyone for voting and posting/tweeting about the contest, I’m doing my first weekly round-up. I’m a bad blogger and I should have started doing these before, but it’s better late than never. All the posts below came from someone who tweeted or blogged about my contest and helped me win $250! Please check out these posts because each one of them is straight money!
Before I give you the round-up, here’s the daily Thousandaire Question: I wrote a song about the dumbest purchase I’ve ever made; what is the dumbest purchase you’ve made?
My Favorites:
- The Great Mattress War from Serendipity – This chick is basically my twitter girlfriend, and she hooked me up big time with tweets and a post. Check out her story of splitting the cost of a mattress with a live-in boyfriend (named Rambo… sounds scary, I’d just do whatever Rambo says so he doesn’t shoot me).
- The Four Hour Work Week from SpendLessTV – This is just one of the many videos here that I found interesting. If you like watching personal finance videos, this website grabs the best videos from the web and even has a few exclusive videos you can’t find anywhere else!
- Unemployment Rates Over the Past Year or So from FabulouslyBroke – FB hooked me up with a mention at the end of this post about unemployment in the past year or so. Unfortunately it hasn’t been improving as much as we’d like recently, and this is great information for people who aren’t sure how unemployment has been trending.
- Always Keep $100 in your Checking Account from J. Money – If it weren’t for J$, I would never have found the Spendster.org contest in the first place. He also had his own contest where he’s giving away $300 to three random commenters. However, this article talking about keeping a buffer in your checking account. J$ likes $100; I keep about $2,000.
Other Great Posts:
- Should I Join An Exclusive Sports Club? from Financial Samurai – $10,000 for tennis? What do you think?
- Closet Cull 2010 from Girl with a Red Balloon – A girl getting rid of clothes? Unheard of!
- Planning for a New Car from Musings of an Abstract Aucklander – Cars are the bane of my financial existence
- What are your Options when Missed Payments lead to Hefty Rate Increases? from Suzanne Cramer – Don’t just bend over and take it up the tail pipe, that’s for sure.
- 5 Smart Phones for Real Estate Investors from Invest with Passion – My phone didn’t make the list. Time for an upgrade?
- Keep Sales Receipts to Reduce Stress from Sweating the Big Stuff – When someone gives me a receipt, it’s like they are saying “here, you throw this away.”
Kevin McKee is an entrepreneur, IT guru, and personal finance leader. In addition to his writing, Kevin is the head of IT at Buildingstars, Co-Founder of Padmission, and organizer of Laravel STL. He is also the creator of www.contributetoopensource.com. When he’s not working, Kevin enjoys podcasting about movies and spending time with his wife and four children.
Thanks for including me! 🙂 I’ll be sure to add your song to my “Sexy Time” iTunes playlist. :-p
Cars are, indeed, the bane of our financial existence too! Not just the gas, repairs, insurance, registration….but the tickets and OTHER PEOPLE’S FINES that we/I have paid over the years. Don’t even go there…..
And take my word for it, don’t drive other people’s cars. Particularly when they’re POSs and you get slapped with a fine cause their lights are broken. Thankfully, BF no longer hangs out with those losers.