When I first started writing The Simple Dollar, one of the biggest struggles I had was figuring out how to redefine some of my friendships - a struggle I discussed at length . The problem was that a good number of the people I spent lots of time with were constantly engaged in activities that involved spending a lot of money. Constant golf trips, constant traveling to gaming tournaments, constant shopping for music and electronics - these were simply the things that we did . Eventually, I came to realize that for some of the friends, these expensive activities were the sole basis for our friendships. Without the weekend golf outings or gaming tournament trips, several of my friends simply vanished into thin air. Other friends, of course, were (and still are) quite happy to do other things not necessarily based on expensive activities or shopping excursions. In fact, one of our biggest social highlights now is inviting friends over to play board games in the evening - games like Ticket to Ride and Puerto Rico and Power Grid .

Read more here - Friendships and Financial Responsibility