Manage Your Home Economics as If You Are Running a Business, and Watch Your Savings Grow Don't fall into the trap of expending a great deal of energy for a small financial payoff.

I'm convinced that more people would achieve financial success if they managed their home economics as if they were running a small business. As a business owner, you do snap cost/benefit analysis on nearly every decision you make, but for some reason this intellectual rigor gets tossed out the window when it comes to personal finance. We frequently fall into the trap of expending a great deal of energy for a small financial payoff. Here are some examples.

Small Wins

Daily victories. Welcome to the bread-and-butter of personal finance: easy and quick decisions that yield small rewards. I'm talking about clipping coupons, brown-bagging your lunch and buying used instead of new. These daily victories matter, but let's be honest: It takes a long time for them to have any sizable impact on your wealth.