Rockstar Rumble, Round 2, Posts 57-64

Here are the latest games in the second round of the 2018 Rockstar Rumble. We've listed each "game" (one post versus another) along with wording provided by the author when the post was submitted. Also listed is a keyword after each post title to make it easy to vote. Be sure to vote for your favorites since you will help determine the winner! Criteria for the best article is what makes Rockstar content which includes these factors:

  • Starts with an interesting title
  • Includes unique content — we like posts that are edgy, feisty, funny, failure-focused, and super helpful
  • Easy to read
  • Positive/uplifting (vs. negative)

The voting will run for 48 hours. At that point, a winner will be named and will advance. You can follow the results in the brackets here. Please note, there is ONE VOTE PER PERSON. To be sure you see all games, click on the Rumble category link and scroll down. If you like great posts like these featured, you can subscribe to the Rockstar Finance weekday email and get the best personal finance articles delivered to your inbox. Today's games are brought to you by Mediavine, a full-service ad management solution for digital content creators. Here are today's games: GAME 29

VERSUS

  • Paying cash for our house is only half the story (Half) - Paying cash for our house wasn't even the impressive part of the story! When we know what really matters to us, we will do whatever it takes to make those unreasonably amazing thing happen.

[poll id="97"]   GAME 30

  • According to "Retirement Calculators" I'll Never Be Able to Retire (Never) - There are a LOT of "retirement calculators" on the web, a LOT. Most have so many flawed assumptions built into them that you end up being told you can't live off less than $500k/yr like one I stumbled across. This post evaluates different "retirement calculators" and compares them against our own numbers and assumptions to see how reasonable or just plain wack-a-doo those "calculators" really are.

VERSUS

  • Your Budget - The Unsung Hero in the Abyss of Debt (Unsung) - Readers will navigate through the mindset of a person we all were at one point in our lives. It takes readers through the journey of ignorance to knowledge to freedom, all while sharing a personal story that is so common for millennials and Gen Xers alike. It gives hope and new meaning to the power of budgeting.

[poll id="98"]   GAME 31

  • Second Generation FIRE (Second) - What do most parents want for their children, more than anything else? A better life than they had. What better way to give them that gift than to set them up to achieve early financial independence?

VERSUS

[poll id="99"]   GAME 32

  • Five things I don’t regret spending money on (Regret) - So much of personal finance blogging is about ways to cut spending and save money so for a change I thought I'd write about things I'm glad I've spent money on. Not only am I glad I spent money on them, I'm grateful I was able to: in the US we're lucky to able to spend money on the kinds of things we do, and to have the income to afford that spending. Plus I've got a fun, kinda controversial thing in that list! ;)

VERSUS

  • The Personal Finance Triple Constraint (Triple) - I belong to a lot of financial forums and there seems to be this constant competition between people who just want to figure out their money, people who really want to optimize, and people who are looking to get really wealthy. I wanted to highlight the inherent competition between these concepts and talk about the tradeoff - that it is virtually impossible to achieve all three at the same time. I'm hoping people use this post to think about what they really want and focus their effort on that!

[poll id="100"]