Every so often I like to remind new visitors and commenters that we have a pretty sweet rewards system here at Bargaineering, this is one of those reminders. I call them Bargaineering Bucks and they’re worth absolutely nothing in terms of real money but they can be used to bid on items in the Bargaineering Bucks auction store.

You can register here to start earning bucks today. Be sure to register at least once every few months as I clear out accounts that haven’t logged in recently.

The most common way to earn bucks is by commenting on posts (you also get points for visiting each day and logging in) and the most common way to spend them is in that there store.

If you are already a registered user, thanks! If you could be so kind as to share why you like the program so much and what you’ve gotten out of it, I’d appreciate it!

Depending on when you read this, it’s either New Year’s Eve’s Eve, New Year’s Eve, or sometime in 2011… regardless of when you read it, I hope you had a fantastic time ushering in the new year with friends and family. A new year brings new opportunity, a chance at something bold and exciting, and I hope you’re ready to take advantage of it. The last few years have been tough but things are starting to turn around and it’s time to make the most of it!

(Photo: hisgett)

I wanted to wish you and yours a safe and happy holiday. To those who celebrate Christmas, Merry Christmas. For those who had celebrated Hanukkah, I hope you enjoyed the Festival of Lights earlier this month. For those who celebrate neither, may you have good times and safe travels wherever you may be. We’ll return to semi-regularly scheduled program next Monday.

(Photo: tunruh)

Thank you to all the brave men and women who have given everything so that we may enjoy our freedoms. Often times the social and political discourse around the use of military force overshadows our utmost respect for the men and women put in harms way, hopefully that doesn’t happen on this day.

We won’t be publishing anything for the remainder of the day but will be back to our regularly scheduled programming tomorrow morning.

(Photo: tonythemisfit)

The Shorty Awards is an awards ceremony for the “best producers of short real-time content.” At the moment, in the Finance category, there are investing gurus, forex gurus, and stock trading gurus all over the top 20 list.

There isn’t a single regular personal finance blogger on the entire list… that just isn’t right!

If you have a few moments and would like to get a personal finance blogger (unless you consider Suze Orman, who leads the voting, a personal finance blogger… which I don’t) onto the list, please vote in the Shorty Awards!

How to vote (voting ends soon so every vote matters!):

• First, you’ll need an account on Twitter because that’s how votes are registered.
• Then, either visit this voting page or Tweet out “I nominate @bargainr for a Shorty Award in #finance because…” with a reason. Votes that end in “because…” won’t be counted.

That’s all you need to do, thank you!

As an added bribe incentive, if you do vote, send me a URL of your tweet along with your Bargaineering.com username and I’ll deposit 20BB in your account for you to spend in our lovely Bargaineering Bucks store. This applies even if you tweeted out a vote before you saw this post, it’s just a small token of my appreciation for supporting me!

To those who are celebrating Thanksgiving today, I hope you and yours have a festive Thanksgiving day and weekend. I hope you celebrate the merriment and cheer that is Thanksgiving, enjoy the time with loved ones, and stuff yourself full of food prepared with loving care. To those who aren’t celebrating Thanksgiving, eat something decadent.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I want to thank you all for visiting today and every day. So often people think that I’m an expert because I write a personal finance blog. The reality is that while I may be more knowledgeable than the average Joe on money matters, it’s because I’m constantly being educated by the you guys. I see this as a community, not as a podium, and I’ve learned as much from you as, hopefully, you have from me. I hope we can do this for a long time together.

I don’t want to take too much of your time because today should be spent off the computer and with real live human beings.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We’ll return with regularly scheduled programming on Sunday… when I unveil another themed week!

(Photo: voght)

To everyone who has been bidding on the Bargaineering Store auctions, there has been a technical glitch this morning. It’s powered by an auction WordPress plugin that I edited, to use Bargaineering Bucks, and apparently when you deactivate the plugin, it deletes every auction and every bid in the entire database. I have NO idea why someone would design the application that way (you gain no benefit by completely purging the database!) but unfortunately I lost all new auctions and all bids since Saturday. I normally back up the database every single night but the recent WordPress upgrade disabled my daily upgrades… so the end result is a perfect storm where all bids and auction activity since Saturday was lost.

All restored auctions will be honored as they are but anything not restored will not, unfortunately. (I don’t delete completed auctions so all completed auctions have been restored)

Thank you for understanding and hopefully we don’t run into any more problems.

A couple months ago, Will and Greg at Wisebread asked me if I’d be interested in joining a new blog network they were creating, later to be dubbed the Money Tips Network. I’m a big fan of the work they do at Wisebread and so I was eager to join them on a project. Well I’m happy to introduce you to the Money Tips Network, which includes thirteen of the most trusted personal finance blogs.

(click here to continue reading…)

I’m happy to unveil a new Bargaineering.com feature – an email newsletter! (and a new giveaway!)

So what do you get when you sign up for the email newsletter?

• You’ll get an eBook containing 100 easy ways to save money. With the recession in full force, we’re all looking to save some money on the things we don’t care about so that we can spend it on the things we do. The book will have a hundred ways to save so you’re bound to find something you can use, or your money back! (look at how snazzy and bendy that cover looks!)
• Second, there are plenty of things that I want to write about that are too long for Twitter and too short for a blog post. These include interesting things I find on the internet, especially poignant topics in the forums or just commentary on subjects in the news today.
• I’ll also be using it to giveaway all sorts of goodies like the dozens of personal finance books I have on my shelf and announce any sort of timely promotions I find.

Sign Up Today!

Name:
Email:

If you get an error, please try again. The sign-up form seems to be a little flaky and we’re working on it.

As always, you can contact me with any questions whatsoever!

Some of you may have noticed that the banner on the website has changed from Blueprint for Financial Prosperity to simply Bargaineering. For years I confused people by telling them my personal finance blog was called Blueprint for Financial Prosperity (quite a mouthful) but located at bargaineering.com (or pfblueprint.com). So, to make things right and to do something I should’ve done four years and over two thousand articles ago, Blueprint will be set ablaze and Bargaineering will emerge like a phoenix from its ashes!

Everyone Loves Forums!

In addition to the name change, the eagle eyed among you may have noticed a new “Forums” link the navigation menu above and those two follow me on Twitter may have heard me mention it, but last week, with the help of Jeremy from GenXFinance, we launched a new section to the site, the BFP Forums. The forums are a place that I hope many of us can congregate, share information, ideas, tips, tricks, and other nuggets of wisdom.

As regular readers know, I’m a regular person just like you. I’m not an expert, just more knowledgeable about certain topics because I spent the majority of my day reading about it, and so I am often stumped by particularly complicated problems or scenarios. That’s where I hope you can all can come in and lend me a hand. I know there are experts out there in various arenas whether it’s investing (Khyron, Matt, George, just to name a few) or banking (Joe) or gardening (Jon) or frugality (Dawn) or pets (seems like everyone, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t give a shout to my long time friend Nick), so I’m hoping you will all join the forums, ask and answer questions freely, and, above all, become friends with one another so we can all learn and grow together.

A Bribe!

After the emotional appeal comes to bribe, right? It’s starting to be tax season, I’ve already received many of my 1099′s and my W-2′s, and we’ve partnered up with Intuit to give away several Quicken and TurboTax products. I’ll be tying in the forums and forum posts to some of the giveaways so sign up today and join in the spirited conversation.

Another Bribe!

Finally, as an added bonus/bribe, and heretofore unannounced (though some of the top commenters can attest to this), I ask readers for ING Direct referrals to put on my ING Direct referral promotion page. At last estimate I believe I’ve consumed 750+ referrals (30 accounts worth of referrals) on that page. As a reward to frequent forum users, I’ll start asking them, in addition to top commenters, for their ING Direct referrals next (and their spouses and relatives, I just use referrals until they run out!).

If you have any suggestions about the name change, about the forums, please don’t hesitate to contact me!