Successful businesses grow, resist difficult times, and pay lucrative compensation to its owners, shareholders, and employees.  For successful personal financial management, I recommend treating your life like it is a business.   Think of yourself as the owner of your business, your family are the shareholders (and possibly employees), and your goal is to maximize the returns to all of the stakeholders.  Most people will find that if they follow these guidelines, they will avoid many of the financial problems that a great number of people face.

• Create and manage a budget and follow it strictly.  Do not spend more than you have, and make sure your plan allows for a net profit to be invested in the future.  If your budget shows a net loss, you should either cut costs or increase revenues.
  
  


• Invest if the future of your family.  Use your profits to spend on items that will benefit your family in the future...education, training, investments, assets, etc.


• Maximize your revenue.  Always look for additional revenue streams to add to your business (life), such as selling on e-bay, advertising on a blog, a part-time job, investments, etc.


• Successful businesses improve gross margins with purchase discounts and rebates.  Don't pass off discounts and rebates that may take some time, but will increase profits.


• Don't be afraid of leverage, as long as you can pay the interest, and ensure that the borrowing is for an asset that will either increase in value or provide income greater than the interest (such as a house or business).


• Always look for ways to cut costs and pay the lowest prices.  Your purchasing department should compare prices from various vendors and choose the best bargain on all purchases.


• Do not add to your payroll if you cannot afford it.  Make sure you carefully consider all of the costs and benefits to adding to your family.


• Make sure your employees are happy...make sure you spend on vacations and other ways to improve the well-being of your family.


• Hedge your costs.  Well-managed businesses hedge the major costs of materials that they need to operate.  For a family, they typically include fuel (oil), food, home costs, energy, telephone, etc.   Hedging is usually best to do when costs are low and you can "lock-in" low prices (ie, now might not be the best time to hedge fuel costs, since oil prices are at record highs).  A way to hedge costs could include investments in ETF's that track commodity prices, energy companies, etc.