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!

Do You Know About Bargaineering Bucks? from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

(Photo: hisgett)

Happy New Years! from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

(Photo: tunruh)

Happy Holidays! from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

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)

Memorial Day from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

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!

Help Me Represent PF Blogging in the Shorty Awards! from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

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)

Happy Turkey Day! from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

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.

Bargaineering Store Technical Issues from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

In addition to being varied in our experiences, I can confidently say that each writer in the network is a nice person. I know I’ve called on several of them for a hand and they’ve lent it without hesitation. So if you have a problem, chances are you can email them and they’ll be eager to try to help you. So, who are the members of the Money Tips Network?

Money Tips Network Members

MTN blogs collectively reach more than 5 million visitors a month and over 200,000 subscribers.  These blogs represent the best of what the personal finance blogosphere has to offer.

1. Bargaineering - Written by me, Bargaineering is a blog that chronicles his personal finance life. I’m also co-host of the Personal Finance Hour podcast with JD Roth of Get Rich Slowly.
2. Consumerism Commentary - Created in 2003 by Flexo, Consumerism Commentary has been honored by Kiplinger as a must-read blog and named as one of Yahoo’s “Ten Money Blogs Everyone Should Read”.  Flexo runs the original (and still the best) PF blog aggregator pfblogs.org, and recently started the Consumerism Commentary Podcast.
3. Five Cent Nickel - Written by a man who has been meticulously recording his finances since 1997 (stored in Quicken), Five Cent Nickel is one of the oldest and most respected blogs around.
4. Free Money Finance - This site is about one simple thing: growing your net worth.  The 5 Principles of Free Money Finance is a PF blog classic. Business Week says Free Money Finance “offers an inspiring mix of timeless investing wisdom and money-making ideas”.
5. Generation X Finance - Jeremy Vohwinkle is the blogger behind Gen X Finance, a Chartered Retirement Planning Counselor, and the editor of About.com’s Financial Planning section.
6. Get Rich Slowly - Get Rich Slowly, recently named “most inspiring money blog” by Money magazine, is devoted to sensible personal finance.  JD Roth is the other half of  the Personal Finance Hour podcast.
7. No Credit Needed - NCN started this blog in 2005 to track his debt reduction efforts, and has since been inspiring others in their debt reduction efforts. In addition to the blog, check out theNo Credit Needed Network and the No Credit Needed Podcast.
8. Squawkfox - Making frugal living sexy, delicious, and fun. “Fox” has a new book coming out in 3 weeks! 397 Ways to Save Money will help you spend smarter and live well on less.
9. Stop Buying Crap - Despite the title, Cap doesn’t preach being cheap.  Stop Buying Crap is about understanding your unlimited wants and how you may fulfill it with your limited resources.
10. The Digerati Life - You can always count on Silicon Valley Blogger (SVB) to churn out practical, comprehensive, and helpful advice about personal finance and small business.
11. The Frugal Duchess - Miami Herald columnist Sharon Harvey Rosenberg offers a fun, frugal and fashionable way to save money & live well.
12. The Simple Dollar - Trent Hamm is arguably the most respected personal finance blogger today. There’s a great new article on The Simple Dollar everyday, and Trent’s book reviews are legendary.  Get a copy of his recently published book, 365 Ways to Live Cheap: Your Everyday Guide to Saving Money, that helps you save money every day of the year.

Money Tips Network from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

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!

Bargaineering Email Newsletter from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

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!

Bargaineering Name Change & New Forums! from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

On this site, the feed contains full articles, not summaries, so you get the whole thing as if you were actually at the site. Sometimes the images I put into the post that don’t appear entirely correctly and you will still have to visit to leave your comments (I hope you do), but RSS makes reading much quicker and easier. You can use your favorite RSS news aggregator (My favorite is Bloglines) or just have them piped into an email address.

To subscribe to the RSS feed, click on the HUGE orange icon below and Feedburner will walk you through the process:

Blog Feed By Email

If you want to get the feed sent directly to your email, Feedburner also offers an email digest service as well. Simply enter your email in the box below and click submit.

Twitter Too!

Twitter is a microblogging tool that lets you connect with people on a 140 character by 140 character basis. It’s a lot of fun and you should give it a try! I tend to post quick little 140 character ideas and posts to it from something crazy I saw walking around to giveaways and freebies to what I’m eating (ok, just kidding, I don’t twitter what I eat). It’s free, it’s fun, and everyone’s doing it. Please sign up and follow me @bargainr.

Here’s a brief video on Twitter:

How to Subscribe to the RSS Feed from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

The presenter is Jennifer 8 Lee and this video is just a brief presentation of the types of things she researched in The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food, a tome that chronicles Chinese food!

Brief History of American Chinese Food from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

Depending on when you read this, it’ll either be New Year’s Eve or New Year’s day (or some random day during the year!), but I wanted to wish you and yours a happy and prosperous new year. We’ve had a pretty rough 2008 but hopefully things can turn around in 2009!

If nothing else, be thankful you weren’t involved in the Madoff ponzi scheme!

We will be returning to your regularly scheduled programming on Monday, January 5th.

(Photo by Mr. Magoo ICU)

Happy New Year! from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

Turn off the blackberries, shut off the computer, kick off those boots, and hang up your jacket, it’s time to grab a beer (or a glass of wine or a cup of eggnog) and spend some time with the people who love you for who you are and not how much you add to the bottom line.

We’ll be taking the rest of the day and tomorrow off but be back on Friday with a lighthearted holiday Your Take, something I hope you’ll contribute to if you find yourself on the Interwebs on Friday. If not, I’ll see you all on Monday!

(Photo: ~BostonBill~)

Happy Holidays! from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

Well, none of them came close to the world record holder. Yu Makajima can solve a Rubik’s cube in 8.72 seconds when he has two hands:

The dude can solve it in 14.56 seconds when he has to do it one-handed:

The most amazing part is that there’s no rushing, no sense of panic as time elapses, just calm and collected twisting of the edges.

(Photo: farnea)

I Can’t Solve A Rubik’s Cube from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.