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?