The Little Book of Main Street Money: 21 Simple Truths that Help Real People Make Real Money

Conclusion: Wall Street? That Isn't So Far from Main Street

For far too many people, managing money is confined to an occasional hour at the weekend, when they balance their checkbook, pay the bills, and review their mutual fund statements. But if we cordon off our finances like this, we're passing up the chance to get so much more out of our money.

As I hope you have gathered from the preceding pages, money is inextricably entwined with the rest of our lives. Yes, if Wall Street is viewed as the stock market, the brokerage firms, and the mutual fund companies, it is indeed a distinct entity. But if Wall Street is defined as the world of money, it's inseparable from Main Street. Every decision we make—whether we buy the new coat, whether we go to the gym, whether we get married—has a financial impact.

This doesn't mean we should pause before every decision to contemplate its ramifications for our financial future. But it does mean we should make sure our money and the rest of our lives are aligned—and that means thinking much harder about how we spend our time and how we spend our money. Consider seven examples.

1. If our goal is to have more time with family, maybe we should ditch the high-spending lifestyle and go for the smaller house closer to work, so we don't have to fret so much about getting that next pay raise and we don't have to commute so far to the office.

2. If what we really want is to quit our jobs and do something more fulfilling but less lucrative, we should probably stop ...