Rockstar Rumble, Round 4, Posts 9-16

Here are the latest games in the fourth 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 5

  • How To Trick Your Lizard Brain Into Saving More Money (Lizard) - The lizard brain is a really fun way to talk about why people fall into bad financial habits. Plus, I use self-deprecating humor and make fun of my wife's Lululemon shopping addiction. Lizard brain makes us do the same things – good or bad – over and over again so it’s the king of bad habits. It makes us act emotionally and live each day as if it were our last. Think of it as the original proponent of YOLO. Here are three ways to block your lizard from making poor spend-or-save decisions.

VERSUS

  • Average Net Worth by Age – A Look at American’s Wealth & How You Stack Up (Worth) - When you ask Americans to share what they think of as the average/median of anything, they always over-estimate. One of those over-estimates is median net worth (and income!) - it's much lower than you'd expect. I took data from the U.S. Census, charted it out, and really dig into the data across age, education and other factors. It was a fun post to write, I learned a lot, and was shocked how much of American's net worth is home equity.

[poll id="121"]   GAME 6

VERSUS

[poll id="122"]   GAME 7

  • Hard Work Doesn't Pay (Pay) - The American Dream says that if you work hard and play by the rules, you’ll be fairly rewarded with wealth and success. But is this still true? This article helps readers understand how the modern economy is different from our parents’ economy and how we can (and must!) follow new rules to succeed.

VERSUS

  • The Stupidity of the Side Hustle (Hustle) - An honest take on the personal finance world's favorite thing...before cryptocurrency that is. Come for the post, stay for the comments!

[poll id="123"]   GAME 8

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="124"]