Today’s the day! As of now, readers like you can submit entries to the third annual Get Rich Slowly video contest. Share your secrets of financial success and have a chance to win $500. All it takes is two minutes of your time and a little creativity.
This year’s contest is similar to past years. Here’s a video rundown of the rules:
For those who prefer their info via text, here’s a summary:
- Entries are accepted between today and April 15th.
- You can enter one two-minute video in each of two categories: Success Stories and Personal Finance Tips.
- The winner of each category will receive $500. Runners-up will receive books.
- As always, if you have a website and tell us about it, you’re eligible for the $500 Website Award.
- This year there’s an Early Bird Award. Enter by April 1st to be eligible to win $250.
The contest is easy to enter: Simply create a video of less than two minutes, upload it to YouTube, and then let us know about it. I’m the sole judge, and I’ll pick my favorite videos and announce winners by May 1st. (And I know the rules say English-language only, but if there are any good Spanish-language videos, I’ll…well, I don’t know what I’ll do. Pero voy a hacer algo.)
You can share a video from your own YouTube account or upload the video through the Get Rich Slowly contest page, but in both cases you’ll need a YouTube account. For complete info, check out the 2012 Get Rich Slowly video contest homepage. Good luck, everyone, and have fun.
With that out of the way, let’s take a look at some of my favorite recent PF stories from around the web.
Speaking of video, I recently sat for an interview with Maneesh Sethi, little brother of Ramit Sethi (from I Will Teach You to Be Rich). (And boy, I’m sure he loves when people identify him that way!) A lot of the conversation is about what it takes to be a full-time blogger, but we also chat about personal finance, travel, and more. Also pretty cool: Leo Babauta of from Zen Habits gave Maneesh permission to share an interview just for GRS readers. You can grab it here.
Next, my friend Katy Wolk-Stanley at The Non-Consumer Advocate recently posted about how to supplement your income. This isn’t a list of hypotheticals; these are real-world things she’s done to generate money for travel and home improvement. (And she does this while holding a part-time nursing job and raising two children.)
NPR’s Planet Money recently featured the story of Willow Tufano, the 14-year-old girl who just bought a house in Florida. I love this for so many reasons. First, the kid made money by taking furniture and appliances from foreclosed homes — things that nobody wanted and were going to be discarded — and selling the stuff on Craigslist. Then she pooled money with her mother to buy a house at auction for $12,000. New she’s renting the property for $700 a month, and she plans to buy out her mother’s share before she turns eighteen.
I’ve saved the best for last. At the beginning of the year photographer Kim Miller wrote about how she quit her day job to work for herself full time. So many of the stories I share about self-employment come from bloggers or other web entrepreneurs. It’s refreshing to find one from somebody pursuing another passion. This is a great article for anyone hoping to quit their work to pursue a passion.
Much to my frustration, Get Rich Slowly was down for most of the day yesterday, flagged by Google as an attack site. I hope it’s obvious that GRS is not an attack site. Nothing shady is going on. The problems actually had little to do with GRS and everything to do with my personal site.
My webhost (Dreamhost) has lax security, and I know it, and every now and then one of my sites gets hacked. It happened again over the past couple of weeks. GRS commenter El Nerdo alerted me to the problem days ago, but it was low on my list of things to fix since I don’t update my personal site much. Well, turns out that because I use a lot of jdroth.com stuff here at Get Rich Slowly (photos and so on), Google got cranky that this site was so intertwined with my personal site. It flagged GRS as an attack site even though all the diagnostics clearly indicated that this blog has never caused a problem. Frustrating.
Anyhow, the technical elves at QuinStreet helped to get everything straightened out, and we’re doing our best to separate this site from my personal site so things like this don’t happen in the future. Thanks for your patience!
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Magician of time! Yr travel blog is still broken! Time to call 1-800-Merlin. Furr sirius:
http://www.brickworkindia.com/
i betchu they give you a “famous person discount” like ferris. give it a shot and make a post about it. call it “research on time management”. a tax-deductible way to kill time sinks! (hopefully it won’t be a money pit).
(why i keep checking your blog, you ask? i still can’t see if my lúcuma comment got any replies! ((even if it’s 99% likely that nobody gave a damn)) yes, i am slightly imbalanced like that)
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Jaja. Estás gracioso, Nerdo. Sí, necesito [repair/fix] the other blog. (What verb can I use for repair/fix?) Pero tengo otras cosas más importante para hacer. Además, es posible que ya haya [reapired/fixed] it. I did some stuff yesterday to make it more secure. I’ll see if that helps…
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¿estoy gracioso? ¿sólo ahora? y yo que pensaba ser una fuente de infinito humor…
anyway, depending on the country and people’s customs, you can say “arreglar” or “componer” or “reparar” (or even “remendar” if it’s clothes). reparar is prolly moar offishall, and universally understood, though may sound awkward in some context.
so google still says about your blog that THIS LINK MAY HARM YOUR COMPUTER ( and i believe them!). while the hax0rs may be blocked for now, the destruction remains: i can’t see comments, etc.
more important things you say? the thing broke GRS!!!
anyway, if you need a new host i can email you a referral code for pair networks– been using them for 10 years and i really really like them.
egg –>*|pair networks| face = clean
^^ see what it does? see?
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Mandalo, por favor!
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arreglar works for repair/fix. fyi.
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Okay, I don’t do videos, but the thing that grabbed me was. . .”the donut shop is right outside my window.” Voodoo? Oh, man, the drool is hitting the keyboard thinking about Voodoo Donuts. I’m coming to PDX in May and trying to figure out a way to get to Voodoo. Probably not going to happen (unless I force my sister to stop there on the way to PDX), but I can still dream about food porn all I want. Oh, and looking forward to seeing the contest videos.
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If you make it to Voodoo, drop me a line. I’ll buy you a bacon-maple bar.
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Tip for video producers — when you’re making your video, don’t have the sun shining directly on your camera lens washing the picture out.
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Yes yes yes, Tyler. I know.
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Heh from the blurb you gave on the Planet Money article it almost sounded like the girl was stealing stuff out of forclosed homes. But turns out she was given the appliances for free from the investors who bought the forclosure. While on one hand I’m temped to say, hey if I got tons of stuff for free I don’t see how I’d fail to make money. But also it’s an interesting oppertunity because the investors would’ve actually paid people to toss it in a dumpster and haul away, since the protential profit per dollar wouldn’t have been worth their time to deal with.
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ABC News also did a story on Willow. She is home schooled and she got most of the stuff she resells by having her parents and her grandparents drive her around collecting free items from Craigslist, so there was a lot more parental work involved in order for her to earn $500 a month. While I admire her work ethic and savings, ABC News also showed a picture of the house before the renters. It was well stripped down without doors, door jambs, ceilings (you could see the rafters), etc.. A lot more of her parents money was put into that house in order to make it rentable. We have bought foreclosed properties at Auction in Florida and so has my brother. They have required money put into them in order to make them rentable. I wish that NPR and ABC NEWS would tell complete stories instead of making it seem so simple.
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Hi, JD.
Although this has nothing to do with your contest I had a comment regarding your blog and life. I am new to your site and have been reading some of your archived posts. There is a real emotional disconnect between what you were writing in Dec. and Jan. and your life. You mentioned a couple of times that you were a happy man and a lucky one but it turns out you were in the midst of emotional turmoil from your separation. This is not authentic behavior to put it mildly. You also are probably in some emotional turmoil from your mother’s problems. I hope that your confusion and pain are lessening. While your public doesn’t need details, being congruent with your emotional state and your writing is something your readers deserve. Best wishes for a good outcome, J
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J, I think what was going on in jd’s life then was personal and he wasn’t ready to share. Having separated myself at one point I can tell you I was a happy and lucky woman in many aspects of my life and while yes my marriage was not good, many other parts of my life were. This may very well have been the case for jd.
(I’m not having a go at you, it is so hard to convey things sometimes in written word. Just wanted to clarify that.)
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Hi, Kylie,
Thanks for the comment. My point in part was that he did not need to share his pain, but he did not need to mention the happy or lucky bits either. Considering that posts before that mentioned lucky but very rarely commented on his mental state otherwise, it ends up feeling like he was being defensive about his life at the time. Given some of his comments after he made the separation public about the negative comments others had made, the happy comments just feel off…Since he is about looking truthfully at your behavior financially, it is difficult to see where being emotionally dishonest with yourself will help you be honest financially. The comment was made more to make him aware of a potential issue he might think about for himself than as a dig at any of the columns. Best to you as well, J
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This looks like a great comp. I am only just getting into video things, but it has been fun so far. I have a few ideas.
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What a great contest! I can’t wait to see the entries.
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Thanks for linking to my “How to Supplement Your Income.” I have published several similar posts over the past couple years, and what makes them interesting is what my readers do to bring in the cash.
I always come away with a new idea or two.
I had also read that article about the 14-year-old home owner/landlord from NPR. Even though I was super impressed with her ingenuity, I was a bit concerned about her ability to deal with the realities of maintaining a rental home. There are a lot of expenses that come with homeownership. The photo of her with her renters showed a pretty bleak landscape-less yard and wonder if she’s a bit of a slumlord. Of course, I don’t really know the details.
Nice to have you back, and I’m enjoying these occasional afternoon posts.
Katy
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Fantastic Concept – look forward to watching them all
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This sounds really exciting! I’m going to see what I can put together for it.
I’m not much of an expert on saving money tips, but I do have many success stories, at least recently, that I would love to share with everyone. I’m looking forward to watching everyone’s videos!
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I hate to say this since you like donuts and jelly beans, J.D. – but if you’re looking to cure your allergies and you’re in the CrossFit community, you should really try the Paleo diet for 30 days. It’s reversed a lot of my “irreversible” health problems
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I really have to wonder about the 14 year old. Really what I wonder is how much did she legitimetly earn ‘on her own’ and how much is realistically sheltered income for her mom funnelled through the daughter to avoid paying income taxes – since she presumably makes ‘so little’. To be fair – she legally owns half the house – but cannot be held for any liability – she’s 14! The parent is really the landlord and has put her daughter on the title to help her gain equity – no problem with that (it’s really good business on the parents part)- just don’t paint it as something it’s not.
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Read my comment to #7. There really was a lot more to the story. Neither story said what part of Florida she and her parents bought the house. According to ABC News, her mother (who is a foreclosure listing agent) and her father own several rental properties. Agents can see listings coming into their offices giving them and their clients a leg up to get offers in before it’s listed to everyone in the MLS. There’s nothing wrong with that because that’s an advantage of working with an agent when you are a buyer, but it can give her an advantage to deals. Back in 1990 when Texas had a real downturn in the market, we bought our house because a neighbor, holding a garage sale, told us about a house going on the market and we were able to contact the listing agent and had our offer accepted before it got put into the MLS. He had just put his sign in the yard a couple of hours before. I also wonder how much this was a publicity stunt on the part of the mother for free advertising.
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It’s kind of like a ‘friend’ of mine in high school – who made just over the legal limit to be considered financially independant working for dad’s paint company the 2 years before going to college – end result – parent’s income was disqualified from consideration for financial aid – free ride to college for a kid wholly supported by mom and dad – money intented to go to actual 18year old emancipated kids.
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