You know, sometimes I’m an idiot. When I scheduled this year’s Get Rich Slowly video contest, I basically just copied all of the parameters from last year. That makes sense, right? No reason to re-invent the wheel if I don’t have to.

There’s just one problem: While the April 15th contest deadline is cute and symbolic (it’s this site’s blogiversary date), ending a contest like this on a weekday is kind of goofy. I’m not going to get to judging the entries until next week, anyhow, so why not give people the rest of the weekend to work on their videos? I’ve decided to do just that.

The deadline for entering the Get Rich Slowly video contest has been extended by 48 hours. If you’d like to participate — and I hope you will — you have until Sunday night to submit your entry.

If the government can extend the deadline to file taxes, surely I can extend the deadline for a video contest. And in the future, I’ll try to be less clever with stuff like this and more practical instead.

Just for kicks, here’s a success story from Jeff Rose of Good Financial Cents:

You can watch all of the entries (and some of them twice because of some technical glitches) to get ideas for a video of your own. Inspired? Join us!

Before I get to today’s links, here’s a quick question: How do you feel about the threaded comments? We’ve had them for about a week now, so most of you have had a chance to get used to them. I like them, but I miss the comment numbers. (I think the technical elves are working to get those back.) If I had to choose, I’d keep the threaded comments, though — you folks seem to be interacting more, which was my goal with this change.

Now, let’s take a look at a few personal-finance stories from around the web:

First up, the redoubtable Tyler K. sent me a great post from one of my internet idols, Philip Greenspun. Philg has come up with a novel solution to understanding Congress’s solution to the federal deficit problem. He’s just divided the numbers by 100 million. The results?

We have a family that is spending $38,200 per year. The family’s income is $21,700 per year. The family adds $16,500 in credit card debt every year in order to pay its bills. After a long and difficult debate among family members, keeping in mind that it was not going to be possible to borrow $16,500 every year forever, the parents and children agreed that a $380/year premium cable subscription could be terminated. So now the family will have to borrow only $16,120 per year.

Hilarious — yet also sad at the same time. (And before the partisan bickering starts in the comments, remember I dislike both sides equally. They’ve both been spending like there’s no tomorrow, so no amount of fiery rhetoric is going to give anyone the moral high ground here.)

Moving on to something less controversial (or is it?), there’s a recent report out that says young people don’t use financial advisers — they use Facebook to learn about money. Well, not just Facebook, but a variety of online social networks. And this isn’t just average folks, either — it’s investors with more than a half-million dollars of investible assets. Interesting. But then, what am I saying? We’re all here discussing money at a blog, right? So, we’re part of this group! You can read the full study online [PDF].

Finally, Dough Roller shared the inspirational story of how he paid off $237,428.13 in debt in less than five years. His secret weapon? Same as mine: “Find a way to earn extra money to help fuel your debt pay-down.” There’s a reason I harp on earning extra money, folks: It’s the best way to supercharge your financial engine.

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