Whenever you buy anything online, it’s always a good idea to do a quick search for coupons or discount codes. You can often easily find 10% off, 20% off, and free shipping. Many times the values are even higher than that.

With many purchases or just large ones, these discounts can add up quickly. Whenever you are checking out and see a box for a promo code, it’s always prudent to take a quick look for some codes before submitting the form.

You can find some great discounts with Adobe coupons. (Although university students can get very cheap education packages from their campus bookstores) If you need to get a copy of Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, Acrobat, or any of Adobe’s other products, then you should check it out

You can get discounts with Kohls coupons or Macys coupons. This could save you a chunk of change, versus shopping at their department stores. And if you wanted, you could even go take a look at the items in the brick and mortar stores beforehand.

Hopefully you will be able to find some great bargains and codes that will save you money today and down the road.

This post has been sponsored by ‘Coupons for Everyone’.

Back in December when I reviewed  Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time, I did not live in a community dotted with a Starbucks at every block, so I have never been to a Starbucks.  I was able to read the book and see the vision Howard Schultz, the CEO, had of the company.  I saw how he wanted the Starbucks image to exist. I wrote my review of his business techniques in the book here.

Now my commute to work passes three Starbucks Cafes, so I decided to check the place out.  My brain carried the image Schultz painted in his book.  The experiences have been totally different.  Yes the employees were great and the coffee was delicious–but it was the other things that were off.  He said they give real cups unless customers ask for to-go cups.  The baristas told me it’s actually the opposite.  They don’t even have enough porcelain cups to accommodate the seats in their shop.  Schultz said his business was green; the places I visited had no recycling for the disposable cups.  The differences between what Shultz said was standard and what I saw were shocking.  But it just goes to show:

A CEO can’t always be in touch with what is really happening in his company.  It’s like a king–does he really know everything his subjects are up to?  There are so many people and so many cups of coffee.

I feel lucky that I read the book before I walked in the coffee shop.  Of course, it means I was disappointed when I walked in while the average person is won over by the experience.  Oh well.  No wonder this book is on clearance at Amazon now.

I thought it might be nice to organize the books that Katie and I own or have talked about here on Aridni.  I’ve started to put together the Aridni Library -click here to check it out- there are still some books that need to go in.  And I’d like to get them linked up to relevant posts later on.

So this is a starting point for that process.  I hope it will become a helpful resource for you as it gets developed more and more.  Pretty soon we’re going to need to get a librarian on staff!!

I’ve moved the new theme for Aridni out of the sandbox and onto the main page.  While this isn’t exactly the final product, I wanted to get it launched as soon as possible.  There will be a couple smaller changes with some color tweaking and minor spacing issues resolved.  As well as some ‘big ticket’ changes.  Primarily with the image on the top left, I’m not liking the weird moon looking shape.

On the right, there is a new feature for Aridni called ‘Bookit!’  With that you will be able to see what books we most recently reviewed and read.

Well, that’s all the news for right now.  Have a good day.

Todd

Richard Branson, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin are ready to start life on Mars.  They have just announced their new partnership ‘Virgil - The Adventure of Many Lifetimes‘

The goal of course is to set up a full time colony on Mars.  If you want to apply, you can take their questionnaire to see if you have what it takes.  It might be wise to have sent them an email yesterday.  Fortunately thanks to another new Google application on the Gmail side of things, you can!

I can’t wait to see what some of the other websites and companies come up with today.

I recently finished reading ‘The Art of Deception - Controlling the Human Element of Security’ which is a book written by Kevin Mitnick. In case you haven’t heard of Mitnick before, he is the most famous social engineer ever.

Social Engineering is basically using the social skills of influence and persuasion to get whatever the the persuader wants. It relies heavily on the reliance and exploitation of basic human trust. It’s quite similar to being a conman, only usually it’s done against a company rather than an individual.

Mitnick talks about various workarounds in security systems that can be bypassed by anyone using the correct lexicon who sounds like they know what they are talking about. He explains different methods of attack and ways to get a hold of information using different scenarios.

A good portion of the book is about shielding your company from attacks from social engineers and possible policies that you might want to employ. This portion of the book is done very well and I would recommend checking it out, espicially if you have never heard of social engineering before.

During the first meeting, I learned that I was talking to a sort of affiliate marketer.  I also learned that there was a startup fee, as well as a monthly fee for the program.  Once you are in the system, you can make money in two ways.

First, by selling stuff and collecting an affiliate fee.  Secondly, you can recruit others to sell the junk and collect a referral fee.  And it’s only going to cost you a set up fee of $126 and a monthly fee of $50 to keep your website running.  I don’t know about you, but this has bad idea written all over it.  Especially when I got to the second meeting.

This time there were two people involved in selling me this system.  The same person from the previous meeting, and someone higher up the food chain came to talk to me.

They began talking, and half an hour later they were repeating themselves profusely; however, their circumlocutory speech was not the real issue.  They mentioned that setting up your business, and getting sales would pay for itself in the first month.  “Okay,” I asked, “So how do you get sales on your site?”

The two looked at each other, then at me before saying, “Well, how would YOU get sales?”

I mentioned I would find some relevant keywords and bid on them in Google Adwords to direct people to my targeted pages.

The two looked at each other, then at me.  They had no idea what I was talking about.  So I asked again what they did.

The way they get products sold from their site is to buy it themselves.  Now at 10% to 50% commission that means they are buying somewhere between $100 and $500 on their sites each month.  All this was to gain some sort of PV (or Point Value in their strange little world) witch somehow gets transformed into cash back.

The money with this is made of course once you get enough noobs under you to buy their own products.  Then you will get a small chunk of change from their sales.

I asked to see the backend of one of their sites.  I wanted to take a look at how much control the pupetmasters gave them.  But of course this must lead up to another meeting!  So I’ll let you know what happens if this meeting ever does.

I feel bad for all of the people who drink the koolaid without knowing what they are getting themselves into.  Which sounds like a lot of people are doing with their ‘pie in the sky’ wishful thinking.

Not very long ago, I listened to an audio-lecture on NPR about shopping and investing locally. This was from a man named Michael Shuman, he is the author of the book ‘ The Small-Mart Revolution.’ In this book he talks about the benefits of a locally owned and operated businesses. During his lecture he talked about these issues as well as some of the problems involved in attracting local investors in a fiscally responsible way.

Each community needs to develop its own self reliance and maximize the opportunities presented. This will help them to grow in a sustainable and reliable way.

Michael currently runs the site Smallmart.org and I found this article. About halfway down he has a list of things that will help you appear attractive to local shoppers.   This list includes…

1. Being locally owned - The most needed part of the equation!
2. Develop a local identity - Let people know that you are local and be proud of it.
3. Behave Responsibly - Respect the workforce and the environment if you want anyone to respect you.
4. Give back to the community - Let them know your business cares.
5. Maximize ‘Local value added’ - Do more than locate your headquarters here, put your factory or do your business here as well.
6. Cater to local markets - You can still sell to the rest of the world, but make sure you sell to those around you first.
7. Develop local partners - This could be contacting other businesses for one time events, or perhaps shopping in local stores for any supplies you need.
8. Grow deep - Expand your offerings to the local crowd.
9. Avoid predatory behavior - Just because you offer some of the same goods or services doesn’t mean that the other company is your enemy, just your competition.  Perhaps possibly even a local partner in the future.
10. Exit locally - When you close up shop, who will take over your business?

I really enjoyed the lecture that he gave, but I think I’ll need to pick up the book in order to extract as much of his ideas as possible.

Earlier this month, a fellow personal finance blogger, The Simple Dollar, wrote an excellent piece about how he and his family was defining themselves by stuff up until two years ago.  They were buying five DVDs every week along with the latest gadgets, golf clubs, and other stuff on whims.

He nearly had a financial meltdown, he says… until he got smart about debt, money, and what’s really important.  He started selling off excess junk that he had accumulated, and seriously watched his spending.

Read how The Simple Dollar made life-changing habits to make his debt shrink instead of grow.  Now he and his wife celebrate multiple streams of income and feel financial satisfaction–something completely foreign to them before.

Check out The Simple Dollar for this inspirational story and suggestions for your own transition into control over money.

I just read an article over at ‘Smart Money‘ about how couples often make similar mistakes in regards to their finances. It brings up many good points and issues.

“Most of us don’t know how to talk about money,” says Mary Claire Allvine, a certified financial planner (CFP) and co-author of “The Family CFO: The Couple’s Business Plan for Love and Money.”

“People tend to be emotional and reactive about money, not strategic,” she says.

When emotions run high, people tend to make fiscal mistakes. Allvine’s solution: Approach family finances as if you were running a business. “If you put a business metaphor into the picture, you’d be surprised how much more methodical people are.”

In this article she talks about 6 common pitfalls that could arise if issues are not properly resolved.

1. Merging finances
2. Controlling debt
3. Spending habits
4. Investing Wisely
5. Money Secrets
6. Emergency Planning

Give the article a read, I think that you will find it full of good ideas and perspective for you.

Recently I was approached about a ‘business opportunity,’ but the guy couldn’t tell me about it right then. That didn’t seem to be to be an issue, there were a lot of people around. The guy gave me his card, and we set up a time to meet in a couple of days. I did a quick search on the company, because it occurred to me that it might be a pyramid scheme or multi-level-marketing.

I figured there were three options.

1. It was doomed to failure.
2. It was a pyramid scheme and doomed to failure.
3. It was actually legitimate.

I’d like to believe that I have a pretty good BS detector and would be able to figure out what are the pressing issues. So on the off chance that it was the third, I went to the meeting.

Nothing revolutionary happened that is of interest. It was basically a big ‘what if’ scenario. What if you didn’t have to work for the rest of your life? What if you could build equity in your sleep? What if you could get other people to make money, and it would make you money?

And then the meeting ended. He basically took half an hour to tell me that he was an affiliate marketer of sorts. The details would have to come to me at another meeting from on of his mentors.  This is starting to look more and more like a mlm (multi level mistake), but there could be a nugget of information stored in there somewhere.

A couple of days later and I find myself at another meeting…

Now that you have seen a couple of games that are great for developing strategy in groups, what about good old ‘one on one’ games? Well there are some great ones out there, just waiting to be discovered and played.

1. Hive - In this two player game you control half of the hive, a collective of insects and spiders buzzing, jumping, and scurrying around. You’re goal is to surround your opponent’s queen bee completely.

   Each insect has a different movement path that it can follow. Grasshoppers can jump over clusters. Ants can march around the perimeter. Beatles can crawl over the top. You can never break the hive into two parts, so everything is connected at all times.

   You will be able to either move one of your pieces, or place a new one on the table. The game is quick, and it jams in quite a bit of thinking into that time. I like to compare it with chess, every piece has specific move it can make, and the goal is to take out one piece.

2. Carcassonne Hunters and Gatherers - While this game can be played with up to 5 people, it really plays well with only two. So I have decided to include it here as well.

   The idea in the game is to control different sections of the land as they are ‘discovered’. Each turn you draw a tile and have to fit that into the game in a way that all the edges match. (Forests on Forests, rivers on rivers, and plains on plains) Then from there you have an option of placing one of your ‘meeples’ (miniature people) onto the board. Once that section is complete, you will score the points of it and get your meeple back.

   The game isn’t huge on strategy, you are at the mercy of which tile you draw. But there is quite a bit of tactics in where you place that tile, and if you do add a meeple to the board. It is defiantly worth a play.

3. Scrabble - Now Scrabble is a game that you have to have heard of before. Because of that, I’m not going to go into much details on it.

   Simply use your rack of letters to play words on the board in a crossword like manner. Placing the letters so that you get to that triple word score is key, but creating good words is also going to make a big difference.

   Like Carcassonne above, this game can be played with more players; however, Scrabble plays the best with only two.

I hope that these will be able to challenge you, and whoever you decide to play against. As in most games, the more you play the better you get, and the more ideas you can try. So give them a shot, and see what you think.

Do you have a favorite two player game that forces you to think?