Spring is here again, and so is Free Money Finance’s March Madness!  Last year I was lucky enough to come out on top as the winner, and this year one of my posts has somehow found itself  in the running for top personal finance post of the year again!    There have already been 2 rounds of voting, and we were able to advance against stiff competition.

Round 3, or the Sweet Sixteen,  launched today!  If you feel so inclined, please head on over to Free Money Finance and vote for me, and help put me over the top!  Just vote for my article, Managing Your Money Is An Exercise In Both Mathematics And Psychology (Psych) in the comments.  Read more... (395 words, 11 images, estimated 1:35 mins reading time)

• Staying Solvent in Bad Economic Times Every day, the news about the economy seems to be getting worse and people across the world are concerned that they will be personally affected by the changes. In many cases, they already are when you consider how the cost of living has gone up, gas prices that seem to......
• Personal Finance Links (Avatar Edition) This is coming a little late, but I wanted to make mention that if you haven't seen Avatar you should definitely go. I didn't really have much interest in it, nor did I know anything about the story, but after seeing it three times I can say it's a great,......

UPDATE: The contest has closed. Our $25 gift card winner was chosen at 12pm on Tuesday. Our winner is Matt Jabs over at http://www.debtfreeadventure for comment #53 – for subscribing to the site! Thanks to everyone else who entered!

Last year the nice folks at Marshalls and T.J. Maxx were nice enough to send us some $25 gift cards so that I could go and do some last minute Christmas shopping and then write about my”frugal shopping trip“. I went on my shopping trip the day before Christmas, and I got a ton of stuff for $25.  I was impressed with just how much stuff you could get at their stores for such a minimal amount.  Read more... (664 words, 14 images, estimated 2:39 mins reading time)

• My experience with LendingTree, and free gift cards Jim told his readers about his experience with LendingTree and he was pretty impressed with it.  I was also impressed with it when I did my mortgage refinance a couple of years ago.Jim's article is good (as always), but I disagree that the banks aren't competing for your business.  On......
• How Some Readers Stretched Their Gift Budgets (And The Gift Card Winner) We had a total of fifteen comments that qualified for the Marshalls/TJ Maxx gift card giveaway.  I used Random.org to generate the winning comment (each comment is numbered).  Comment 12 from Sarah R is the winner! Congratulations Sarah!  I've already sent an email to get mailing info to send out......