giveaways

Here are links to a couple of interesting articles I was reading today morning.

• Yes, You Can Live Rent Free @ Kiplinger.com: There is some discussion about concepts like “house sitting”, “roommate bartering”, and “home sharing” from a point of view of reducing (or eliminating) your rent. The article points towards some resourceful websites like SabbaticalHomes.com, RoommateExpress.com, and National Shared Housing Resource Center regarding these concepts.
• Financial Fundamentals - Tip Top Tips for 2007 @ KeyBank: The link points to a PDF file. There are a dozen common sense tips in the document; not in great details, but in a succinct summary format. Pretty handy if you want to print and keep it as an easy-access reminder. (print it and may be stick it in your restroom…in such a way that you will read and understand it everyday )

Also, I want to remind you all of the $100 “anything you want” giveaway that’s currently running on this blog. Don’t miss your chance to ask for that personal finance book or magazine that you always wanted, but never bought. Entries will be accepted till Thursday, 29th March.

In other news, things are getting a little busy around here, and it’s taking a bit of an effort to get to the keyboard. Teaching sleepy undergrads @ 8:00 am in the morning is incredibly exhausting.

In the last seven months, this blog has come a long way from being a weak, disoriented start-up to attracting it’s first advertising deal and crossing the 50,000 visitors mark not too long ago. This journey would not have been possible without the support of some loyal fellow bloggers, avid readers, critics, and commentators. As a way of appreciating the continued support, I would like to give something back to my readers (you!). If you are a personal finance enthusiast, you will consider this giveaway as your *dividend* for investing your time and efforts in reading, commenting, and providing feedback on this blog, and for encouraging me to strive towards generating better content.

Ideally, I would have liked to give something to everybody who has provided a feedback on this blog; however, I am not yet in the Forbes list of billionaires, and will have to make do with distributing just $100 according to the following scheme:

• Four readers will get *anything* they wish for, up to a maximum of $25 each (shipping must be included).
• *Anything* means - any one thing that is preferably related to personal finance (for e.g. books, magazine subscriptions, piggy bank, money games, gift cards to book shops/online book stores, etc.)

The rules are like this:

• To be eligible, you need to leave a comment on this post in this manner: “I wish for _______”, (don’t put any links here and you cannot ask for cash) and below that you must answer these three questions:
  • In your opinion, what is the best action you have taken to ensure a better financial future for yourself or your family?
  • How do you intend to use the thing you have wished for?
  • What is your favorite post on this blog? (You don’t need to explain why, just give the title)

That’s it ! it’s that simple. Entries will be accepted till Thursday, 29th March.

I will number all the comments and randomly choose 4 winners from them by using something like this. After the 4 winners are selected, orders will be placed for their *wishes*. All other relevant details will be discussed only with the 4 winners.

There are different ways in which you can maximize what you can get from this giveaway. Think over it…do some research.

OK time for the giveaways that I promised a couple of days ago.
I am also keeping my promise about small USB flash drives (small is the keyword here ).

I will give away 4(four) USB flash drives; one each to 4 eligible winners of the giveaway.
The drives have the following specifications (also see the image alongside):

- Brand new SanDisk Cruzer Mini flash drives
- USB 2.0

- 32 MB (yeah!..consider this a trailer)
- Neck strap is not included

The 4 winners will be chosen out of all the eligible entries by a lucky draw. There will be a post mentioning and linking to all eligible participants at the time of declaring the results.

You have to do these two small things to be eligible for the giveaway:

1. Write a post on your blog that links to your favorite article/post on this blog. You may write something like “why I like this article”…or “this post is interesting because….” ..or something similar.
2. Leave a comment on this post to let me know you have linked to a certain article.

That’s it….done….it’s that simple.
-This is not a requirement, but if you like this blog, please feel free to subscribe to the feed . Or use the nice orange button at the top left corner that looks like this: or the Bloglines button that looks like this:

Other details:

1. The contest will end on 22nd December (Friday).
2. Multiple entries are allowed, but you should satisfy the two eligibility requirements above for each entry. For example, if you want to enter twice, you should link to two different articles on my blog and leave two seperate comments.

Not-so-fine-print:

- I won’t be able to ship the drives outside the US. Sorry about that.

- The 4 lucky winners will be chosen as follows. All the comments received will be numbered starting from 1 for the first comment and ending at the last comment. Then, from these numbers, a random sequence will be generated using an algorithm from random.org. The first 4(four) numbers of this randomly generated sequence will be the winning comment numbers.

Have fun

I am contemplating on some giveaways in a couple of days (may be sooner).

For starters, may be something like small USB flashdrives.

Keep watching this space for more information !!