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?

Quite some time ago I wrote a series of posts about Benjamin Franklin, and his business prowess. The series of posts was following the 12 rules of management from a book written by Blaine McCormick. In one of the posts, ‘A Simple Recipe for Lifelong Learning,’ I briefly mentioned a bit about using board games to gain ideas and try different ideas and strategies. I thought it might be a good idea to show you a couple of board games that you might like to try out.

1) Settlers of Catan - In this game, you are trying to control the island of Catan economically. Each different type of tile has the ability to produce a different resource that you will use to develop roads, build settlements, upgrade to cities, and use for bartering with other players. At the start of every turn, resources are produced for everyone who has a settlement in the right area. Following that you have the opportunity to trade and build.

The great thing about this game is that the board is based on tiles. Each time you play the game there will be a different island, and the resource production rates will also be different for each game.

2) Ticket to Ride - Connect the world! Well, rather connect the United States with your rails. (There is also a German version, a Europe version, and a Switzerland map) In ‘Ticket to Ride’ you are trying to connect cities across America. Doing so will get you points in two different ways. Every time you lay down train tracks and if you can complete your secret route cards.

The route cards are very simple. They have two cities and a point value. If you can connect the two cities on your railway, you get the points. Otherwise they will count against you. The farther apart your cities are, the more it will be worth. The turns move along fairly quickly as it is easy to come up with your next move before your turn happens again.

During your turn you will have three options - take more route cards, lay down track, and collect train cards (which you use to lay down track). What is your backup plan when somebody takes your route? What is the best way to get from point A to point B? It’s not always a strait line in this game.

3) Puerto Rico -In the game Puerto Rico, you are trying to stimulate economic growth on the island and build up San Juan. You have several different ‘roles’ that you can choose during your turn. But when you choose one, everyone can do the action. So you really have to determine when the best times are to trade goods in the market, ship them off to England, build buildings, and harvest crops. Once a role is taken, it can not be used again until the next round.

You will also have the ability to build buildings in San Juan. They will allow you to do things such as getting better prices at the marketplace, being able to store more goods, and of course the ability to process the goods. The only thing that I should caution you about this game is the time. It will take around 90 minutes to play this game, even more time during the first run through.

Hopefully you will get a chance to play these games; however they all require 3 players minimum and go up to 5. (Settlers of Catan only goes up to 4, unless you buy a 5-6 player expansion.) There are also some great 2 player games to rack your brain, I’ll talk about them in an upcoming post.

The net worth is struggling to maintain itself these days, and to be honest, I’m not thinking about money to the point of obsession like I used to. Instead, I’m experiencing the things that I haven’t been able to do since college:

learning how to cook
writing a book

My husband is doing something he’s always wanted to do:

earning a master’s degree

While my co-personal finance bloggers experience rapid growth this year, we’re setting different goals for ourselves that involve personal development and enrichment. I work part time until May, which is the coolest feeling I have ever experiencing about work. Working 9 to 5+++ was the most miserable experience I have ever had.

Now I don’t have to worry about what the boss thinks or if I’ll lose my job or how to spend my messily vacation days. I have total freedom for myself, which no one else in my office experiences. Sure I get paid less. But at some point, we have to ask ourselves what matters most: lots of money or lots of freedom.

I read a fantastic book that illustrated the way I was feeling:
The Anti 9-to-5 : Practical Career Advice for Women Who Think Outside the Cube

I suggest that anyone feeling frustrated with work take a glance. It has some fantastic strategies for reflecting on what makes you happiest and determining how to obtain the best situation for your working self. The fact that it’s targeted to women is something pretty much only relevant in the title. The rest is easily male or female.

The essays by Paul Graham often come up in my family. Graham made millions when his team sold their programming work, Viaweb, to Yahoo for millions. But the knowledge Graham shares goes beyond programming.

He’s got a lot of social wisdom. My favorite is his article, Why Nerds are Unpopular.

Here’s an excerpt:

The main reason nerds are unpopular is that they have other things to think about. Their attention is drawn to books or the natural world, not fashions and parties. They’re like someone trying to play soccer while balancing a glass of water on his head. Other players who can focus their whole attention on the game beat them effortlessly, and wonder why they seem so incapable.

Even if nerds cared as much as other kids about popularity, being popular would be more work for them. The popular kids learned to be popular, and to want to be popular, the same way the nerds learned to be smart, and to want to be smart: from their parents. While the nerds were being trained to get the right answers, the popular kids were being trained to please.

Have you ever noticed that every time you get an idea, it is more than just one idea. You get a vision for an entire system. Of course all of the exact mechanics are not quite in place, but you can visualize them. And while you are thinking about one part of your idea, it seems to multiply and your options expand at an alarming rate. This is because ideas breed ideas.

I am sure that you have heard the phrase ‘success breeds success’ and that is fairly straightforward. If you have done something successful and proven yourself it will be easier to do another project that is successful as you will have much more recourses at your disposal.

Ideas can work in a somewhat similar way. If you have one idea, it can lead to many more if you would let it. And a great way to come up with more ideas is to work on one that already exists.

If you are listing ideas, have you ever noticed that you come up with around half of them on the spot while you are writing down the first half? Or simply by explaining a current idea to someone, not only will you come up with more as you clarify and expand, but the other person will generally have input.

If the person you are talking with is willing, your conversation will greatly expand your project idea or refine it until your idea has grown into a plethora of ideas that is still growing.

So write down your ideas. Let them evolve. Let them multiply. And of course, let them be developed before it is too late.

When I quit my job last month, I felt pretty uncertain of where life would go, especially because my husband quit his job the month before. I never expected to find such satisfaction in setting and accomplishing my goals instead of my employer’s.

Living without a constant paycheck is tough. When working for someone else, you start to depend on this little burst of wealth every two weeks when a boss gives you a check. When you don’t get that check, I think that you fight a little harder. You don’t clean your house as much, but you keep working when you get home after a long day.

My husband and I can only keep up this schedule until December when he starts graduate school, so I’m trying to make the most of each day. Freedom spoils you, though. I feel like I’ll be like the new college graduates with skewed perceptions of how work and life should be.

But then again, I think college grads believe in something that we long ago forgot:

1. Work and pleasure can be the same thing.
I don’t mean that you have to love every moment of everything that you’re doing—that’s impossible. But shouldn’t you be just as eager to start your work day as you are to finish?

2. Little favors can lead to big favors. Sometimes you can accomplish a lot more when you team up with others who have different skills and ideas. We’ve really tried to build good connections. While we were in Germany recently, our real estate projects kept developing. Our real estate agent was willing to serve as our emergency contact. My sister was depositing monies at the bank. And several great contractors and handymen tackled a few of our dreaded projects while my dad stopped in during his lunch breaks to follow up. With the exception of family, everyone else helped us along because we’ve helped them in the past, and they know we’ll have work for them in the future, too. Bosses can’t be feared, and as a boss, you can’t always appear so fearful.

3. Life is about living.
My last boss was a workaholic, and it made him furious that I wanted to leave at the end of the day. My memories of college often involved doing the least amount necessary to generate the most pleasing results. You figured out exactly what score you had to get on final exams to maintain your grade. And how many people actually read every text that they were supposed to? School was about more than what you learned in class. Work shouldn’t consume you when life holds far more.

4. Money isn’t everything.
I’m not thinking of reverting back to Ramen Noodles. But whatever happened to the thrill of a free meal or cheap living? How about riding that bicycle even when you can afford the gas now? We work to make money, and suddenly we don’t know what to do without the huge sums of money. You become entrenched by growing “necessities”.

5. You don’t have to be an expert to give it a shot.
In the workplace, it’s easy to see the people that are better than you and become passive. Sometimes it’s even easier for the boss to literally remind you of how unknowing you are because you lack the experience, the knowledge he has, or just plain common sense (HIS point-of-view). In college, we were fearless—what’s the worse that could happen? The sense of adventure vanishes at work, I’ve noticed. Don’t just stick with what you’re good at. Take a leap at the things you’ve never tried or don’t do as well.

I’ve never thought much about the financial savings of not having a TV in the house. Yet the gradual savings add up… and may lead you to a savings account of well over a million dollars.

An article on TheStreet.com illustrates the savings of no television that could turn you into a millionaire.

NPR is doing a nationwide project called StoryCorps where people are invited to share their lives. For forty minutes, a person can interview a relative or friend, have the information stored in the National Archives, and most importantly, walk home with a personal copy of the recording.

Ever since my dad and I decided that I would interview my grandma the day after her 90th birthday celebration, my dad has been urging me to record my memories before they become as fuzzy as memories are to my grandma.

Share your lessons on money

My grandma didn’t know much about her own money; my grandfather cared for the books. He died years ago, and I can no longer ask him about his experiences and lessons. Today, such disparities are few. You know about your money, and you know the strengths that are bringing you more money. Start keeping a record of your lessons.

The sad truth is that most of us don’t have living grandparents or family members experienced with wealth over time that we can talk to. It’s pretty hard for them to look back even if we have such people around.

You don’t have to have wealth now to record your experiences. In fact, that’s not the perspective future generations can truly learn from. The mission at Aridni is to walk our readers through our lessons. Have you ever seen a book or self-help program that truly starts at the beginning? Seems like they’re always skipping a step—like you already have the million dollar idea or something! These books sell a philosophy; they don’t offer frankness during each step of wealth building. A personal connection who wants YOU to succeed (not another book sold) offers far more useful nuggets.

I learned a lot from my grandma and family traditions that day. I only wonder how much more I could have learned if she’d written them down when she was younger.

How to write your financial journal

1. Address the journal entry to someone close to you so that you’re more likely to write personal thoughts. I start with: dear friend.
2. Talk about where you stand with your finances today
3. How did you get where you are today?
4. Where do you hope to financially stand in the future? Why?
5. What are some ideas and plans you have for obtaining that goal?
6. What are some smart decisions that you have made?
7. Any mistakes?

I used to wake up each Monday morning feeling relaxed and refreshed. Now all I can think about is taking a Monday off just so that I can catch up on life. Seems like the battle is always the same these days—do you value time or money?

We’ve got two options: keep doing stuff like cleaning the house and doing our taxes or hire someone else to do it. The question is: which is of more value in your life? Your time? Or your money?

During college, the scarcity is unquestionably the money. Time can run in abundance. Then you graduate, get a job, finally gain a little money to do things… and discover that you have no time left.

I’ve always thought that the greatest parody in life is how much we work and work when we’re young and capable so that when we’re old and out of energy, we can stop working. Vacationing in the Alps sounds pretty cool. But when you’ve got the energy to hit the slops and all of the other wild opportunities, you don’t have the money or time. Meanwhile, my grandma could fit a few fancy vacations to the Alps into her life… if she had the energy to travel outside the state lines.

Some British professor apparently came up with a time versus money formula:

V = (W ((100-t) / 100) / C

V = value of an hour
W = your hourly wage
t = your tax rate
C = how much it costs to live in your area

This formula makes sense to me until I think about the cost of living around here… then the equation gets skewed. I’m not sure what the definition of C is. Guess I need to add “figure out this formula” to my to-do list. Any ideas?

In any case, you probably have a good sense of what your hourly value is because it’s what other people pay you for your services. First decide which is more important—your time or your money and how much of each you have to spare or are willing to give up. Housecleaning, yard work, and taxes probably hit the top of your I-hate-to-do list. Pay someone else to do them for you? Hmmm.

Brilliant idea: If you like to do the things that everyone else hates, you can land some big money. Think insurance, tax law, or poop scooping. How many young guys start up lawn mowing services? How many of these guys let the businesses grow beyond their interest in mowing lawns to their interest in running companies? They hire other young guys to mow while they make money.

The balance, of course, is making sure that you don’t run out of money when you hire out the work! Yet I am willing to bet that most Aridni readers don’t confront the time/money situation like this. For us, the feeling of being exhausted holds more value that the feeling of being poor on paper.

So how do you manage to balance your time and your money?

How often do you find yourself wandering to your computer to login to your e-mail? Do you walk by the computer, only to stop and check to see if anyone’s written? You’re curious, and it’ll only take a second.

The problem, of course, is that you and I open that e-mail account far too often. E-mail isn’t an urgent form of communication, so why are we willing to drop everything else to use it over and over? Nothing communicated to you by e-mail is a life or death situation. So how do we curb this addiction?

You have to break the pattern:

1. Make a schedule.
Being curious isn’t reason enough to check your e-mail. I’m willing to bet that an easy 30 minutes a day is lost to curiosity, which usually results in a fairly empty inbox. Decide how many times you’ll check your inbox. Be as strict with yourself as you need to be.

Check a specific number of times each day. When you’ve reached your limit, you’re done.
Open your account on a specific schedule like once in the morning, at lunch, and after work.

2. Limit the number of e-mail addresses that you use
Every time you check your mail, you’re spending twice as much time as you check multiple addresses. I used two addresses and cannot check one without checking the other. By combining the two, my wasted curiosity instantly decreased by 50%.

3. Replace e-mail checking with purpose
Remember that every minute matters. E-mail is abused because it’s easy. We all feel a sense of victory after something is achieved; e-mail is the fasted way to cross things off of our list.

It doesn’t always work. Architects and construction companies cannot communicate the fine details of a drawing over e-mails. They’ll be back and forth for hours without achievement. You and I grew up on instant messengers; we know how efficient these programs make our communication. Online chatting has made me a faster typer… but at the cost of how much time? I can still talk on the phone faster than I can type an e-mail.

Do you ever crawl into bed, thinking of all of the things you should have done during the day? Had you not checked that darn e-mail so much, could you have crossed off something on that list?

4. Define that purpose
When you’re away from a computer, do you think of checking your e-mail? No–only when the computer is nearby. Many weekends, I don’t check my e-mail because I simply don’t have access. So far, I have never opened my e-mail program to find something important that required my immediate attention. During the week, I don’t have anything needing immediate attention, yet I keep checking anyway.

When you do have access to the computer, focus on things that matter more in the long run: passive income, net worth… family. It’s easy to keep walking when you have something that is more pressing on your mind.

You don’t check your post office mailbox over and over, so this week, try to reduce the temporary victories you get in checking e-mail.

Yeah, some people will get mad when you don’t respond immediately. Let those people know that urgent communication with you cannot be addressed in this manner. Tell them to do what your mother does–pick up the phone and call you.

Quite some time ago I wrote an article about an email that I had received. It was a fairly interesting email as it was quite detailed about my life, my goals, and my ideas. The knowledge that this person had about me was so complete that it was almost eerie.

There was quite a bit of lag time in the email. It took quite a bit of time from when it was actually sent until I received it. It was a little over six months before it showed up in my inbox. In this world that is completely absurd. Emails used to take a minute or two, but now they are nearly instant.

In this email, the writer wanted to make sure that I was staying on track. I was held accountable for every idea and project of mine. If it wasn’t done, why not? If I wasn’t working on it, why not? Some of the ideas were ones that I had forgotten about and abandoned long ago, even if they were good ideas.

If you haven’t figured it out yet (or don’t remember from the last post about this!!), the email was from myself. I used a program that allows you to write emails and send them off to yourself at a future date.

Even if you leave Aridni and forget all about it within the next week and then go check out the site and forget all about it. A letter written to yourself and from yourself will certainly help you put your life into prospective.

Before you leave your computer and forget this whole article, go check out futureme.org and write your future self a letter.

Do you remember the last time you decided to set up some New Year’s resolutions? I’ll go out on a ledge and assume it was roughly a year ago. Now exactly how long did that self improving quest last? If you’re like the majority of people you set up your resolution and soon drop it within weeks. By the time you see a coin stamped with the year 2007, your mind will be the so far away from resolutions that they won’t pass through until we’re getting ready to set up the set for 2008.

So what exactly is the resolution solution? How can we keep our resolutions to improve ourselves for this New Year?

The best way to stick to your resolution is to make resolutions that you can stick with.

Instead of making a drastic resolution that you know you won’t be able to keep, why not make something that actually has a fighting chance.

If last years failed resolution was, ‘I will stop smoking.’ Perhaps you should make this year’s resolution be simply, ‘I will smoke 5 less cigarettes a day”

Frustrated because you can’t stick to your resolution to stop eating junk food? How about go with something along the lines of the 90-10 eating rule. Ninety percent of the time, eat foods that are okay for you. The other ten percent of the time you can eat grease burgers and fries. You know, the tasty stuff.

So when you resolve to improve yourself this year, make it something that you can achieve.

What are your resolutions?