Exciting Personal Finance Times Online – Month in Review

July was a fun month! We had a lot of great finance topics from the writer auditions and a lot of great feedback from the readers.  Congratulations to the two winners of the feedback contest:

• David from XFEP
• Tim from TimnCox 

Investing Topics
One of the frequent requests from the reader survey was that I cover more investing topics.  As a result I started the Stock Market Investing 101 series and last month covered how the stock market works.

I also chose an investing theme for the writer auditions and asked them to take a look at investing in specific industries or topics.  Erik chose to to write a mini-series on investing in Exchange Traded Funds, Henry wrote about investing in biotech, and Connie cover investing in commodities.

Hopefully you’ve gotten something out of the additional investing topics in July. That’s one of the reasons why I really liked the survey, it helped me know what you want to read about, so thanks!

Special Deals
Another request was coverage of deals to save or make you money. In my last monthly review I said I’d include more of those but I haven’t gotten around to that yet.  The one deal that I did feature was the cashback promotion where you get $10 cashback if used PayPal when signing up for a free trial of Blockbuster Total Access.

Product Reviews
Something else people wanted to see more of were reviews of specific financial products or services that could benefit them so those were included in the writer auditions as well.

This month we looked at a credit report and monitoring service with a True Credit review, an online savings and checking account with an ING Direct review, the details of the “anything credit” credit card feature in the Chase Freedom card review, and an online payment system with the PayPal review.

Gas Saving Tips
As gas prices keep going up, saving money on gas is an ever growing concern for most readers.  In light of that I looked at gas credit cards, saving on gas with a four day work week, a tip for cutting gas prices with grocery reciepts, and finally a list of gas saving strategies ranging from gas rewards credit cards to working from home.

Career Tips
As I mentioned yesterday, I’m in the search of a new job so you also got some career tips last month.  How to decide when to get a new job and which one to choose, a whole list of career tips in the carnival of careers, short discussion of detail on your resume, and finally the benefits of having a career portfolio.

Thanks for a fun month, looking foward to another great one in August!

Ben Edwards, the founder of Money Smart Life, saved up enough to buy a Nintendo back when he was 12 years old. When he used the money to buy shares of Wal-Mart stock instead, he knew he wasn't like the other kids... His addiction to personal finance has paid off for his family and now he's helping you to afford the life that you want. Check him out on the web at Google Plus, Twitter and Facebook.

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