Last week I ran the first contest so far here at Fiscal Musings, The Millionaire “Giveaway” Next Door Blog Contest. I’d like to now congratulate the two winners of the contest:

• Jane
• Stacy

I’d also like to thank everyone who participated in the contest. I plan to have more contests in the future that you won’t want to miss, so you’ll want to keep reading. Also consider subscribing to the feed so you won’t miss a thing. Thanks to everyone for reading, and I look forward to a lot of great things in the future.

First of all, I want to thank everyone who participated in the first contest here at Fiscal Musings this past week. I’ll be announcing the winners of the contest shortly after I return home from Arizona, most likely on Monday. And now, on to the articles that make up this weekend edition:

1. Punny Money is trying to get the attention any bored rich people who would like to pay him a million dollars to do really anything of their choice. It’s quite the interesting post, and I must say that crazier things have happened.

2. Racer X reminds us that we should be careful when we give personal finance advice. Since money is often an emotional issue for many people we need to be aware of when we should and shouldn’t try to give out advice. People aren’t always ready to hear it.

3. Lily over at The Honest Dollar has an interesting article up about higher food prices along with some strategies of how to deal with them. We’re all probably noticing some higher food prices, but the financial strains can be eased with a few small changes.

Fiscal Musings Throwback (FMT): Last April I talked about the role that risk plays in investing. As with any investment, there will be some associated risks, but there are ways to reduce risk and good information is one of them.

Today is the last day of the contest to win a copy of The Millionaire Next Door. I’m giving away two copies of the book absolutely free, and it’s one of the easiest contests you’ll probably ever enter. All you have to do is leave a comment to the contest post linked to above. It doesn’t even matter what you say in the comment as long as you submit one.

That’s all there is to it. The time is running out though. You only have until midnight tonight to get in. If you’ve been wanting to read this book, leave a comment. If you’ve never heard of this book, leave a comment and find out about it. The point is, leave a comment before midnight and you could win the book absolutely free.

If you’re looking for a resource where you can get information about many different things that affect your finances, you can check out finance genius. For example, if you’re looking for some information about an Automobile Extended Warranty, they have an entire page that talks about the differences between warranties and insurance. They also have information about a whole range of other things that you might want to check out.

I’m off to Arizona today and will be there through the weekend. As you may know, I’ve decided to go to Arizona State University to get my MBA, and this is their preview weekend. Even though it’s a short trip (only until Sunday), I’m glad that my wife is able to come with me. It should be a nice getaway for the both of us, and I’ll be able to see what it is that I’ve actually gotten myself into with the MBA program. So here’s a quick run-down of what’s planned for this weekend:

Tonight there is a reception/dinner at the Scottsdale Mondrian Hotel which looks to be quite a ritzy joint. There’s going to be a pre-dinner reception and then the Associate Dean and Dean of the business school will have some sort of remarks. It should be a good time, although I’m not really keen on wearing a suit to dinner. I suppose I’ll manage though.

On Saturday there are activities planned from 8 am till 3 pm. We’ll be introduced to the core curriculum of the MBA program and then have a case discussion on leadership. The Career Management Center will discuss their role in the afternoon and then we’ll finish up with what I believe to be a question and answer session with current students. We’ll then have the rest of the afternoon and evening to ourselves or to hang out with some of the people that we met over the weekend.

We then fly out early Sunday morning so it’ll probably seem like a really short weekend. Hopefully it’ll not only be a fun weekend away from home, but also an informative one. It’ll also be nice to scope out some of the surrounding areas and get an idea of where we’ll want to live once we move there.

I’ll try to have some updates for this site throughout the weekend, but we’ll see how the schedule goes and what type of access I’ll have to the internet. As a final reminder, the Millionaire “Giveaway” Next Door Blog Contest will be ending tonight at midnight, so if you haven’t already entered just leave a comment to the contest post. I’m giving away two copies of the book, and right now your chances are pretty good.

We dropped one of our cars off at a friend’s place today who is going to replace the brakes on it. I’ve known for a while now that the rotors would need to be replaced and not just the pads since they couldn’t be machined anymore. So why am I bringing this up?

Typically people are not excited when it comes to car repairs because just another thing they need to do and it’s going to cost money. Now, while I don’t enjoy car repairs myself, I don’t really get all that upset over them either. One of the reasons for this is because we own both of our cars outright. General maintenance is something to be expected, and it’s easier to pay for when we’re not having to make monthly car payments.

It also helps that we have built up a decent cash reserve and don’t have to worry about some maintenance problem throwing our finances out of whack. Having an emergency fund definitely helps with a financial peace of mind.

I’m also not tempted to go cheap on purchasing the new parts that need to be replaced. We plan on owning our cars for the foreseeable future, and I’d rather purchase quality parts that will increase the lifespan of the car instead of just trying to get by with something that will work for now. I understand this is a matter of opinion, but this is how I see it.

So working towards actually having your cars paid off and being comfortable driving them for a while, even though they may not be the most stylish, is certainly a goal worth pursuing. It increases your monthly free cash flow and allows you to pursue other options with your money. If paying off your cars and maintaining them isn’t a goal of yours currently, you may want to consider making it one.

If you already run a small business or would like to in the future you not only have to worry about the financial aspects of your business, such as sales and marketing, but you also need to effectively handle the daily operations and everything behind the scenes. Finding easier ways to deal with some of the more mundane tasks can really improve your business and free you up to concentrate on some of the more important tasks.

The Dymo LabelWriters are just such things that wants to help simplify your business life. There are multiple LabelWriters to choose from, but they all connect to your computer through USB. They’re an easy way to handle all of your label printing, and in many cases you don’t need any ink or toner. The other great thing about these LabelWriters is that they can also take care of your postage needs. You can basically purchase online stamps with no monthly fee.

You can learn more about these LabelWriters on their website and find one that would best match the needs of your business. They could save you a lot of time since you’d no longer have to spend time writing everything out by hand or having to change the paper and settings on a regular full size printer. Being able to print your own postage would likewise save on a lot of hassles and time. If you think that these LabelWriters would be able to help you out with your business, check out the Dymo website to learn more.