Want to immediately improve your family's bottom line?

Have money automatically deducted from your checking account if you invest monthly in a mutual fund, annuity or bank savings account.

Reasons: Thanks to the U.S. Post Office, it's become too costly to mail your check. Also, recent research indicates that merely automating your savings plan stands to painlessly increase savings by 30 percent.

That excludes the high cost of gasoline to travel these days.

Let's take the U.S. mail alone.

It costs 41 cents to mail your check to a mutual fund. So if you invest $100 monthly, add .41 percent to the cost of your investment.

That's almost one half of one percent you're knocking off the yield, or return, on every $100 you invest!

This may not sound like much, but say you send a check for $100 monthly to your Boogie Woogie Growth Stock Fund for 10 years. Every time you mail a check for $100 you're really investing only $99.59.

Based on your mailed checks, you've invested $12,000. But that pesky 41 cent fee every time you mail $100 ate up $64 over 10 years. We're assuming the investment grows at only a 5 percent annual rate.

You can write off investment costs on your taxes if you itemize deductions, but that doesn't help much.

"This sounds like peanuts," you're probably saying. But couple this unnecessary loss with annual investment expenses, ranging from 1 percent to 3 percent on a mutual fund or variable annuity, and the result is even more painful.

Merely eliminating stamps and making automatic payroll deposits can be a great way to start growing your wealth. Nacha, the Herndon, Va., electronic payments network, told us that arranging automatic direct deposit from your paycheck, based on a 6 percent return, can mean an extra $22,857 over 10 years......

It's too easy to set up automatic debits to let this amazing wealth-building tactic slip by. Just talk to your investment adviser or mutual fund or insurance company representative. They will help you fill out the proper forms to have your money automatically invested.

Check with your insurance company about automatically debiting your checking account for auto, homeowners, health, life, disability or long-term care insurance.

If you can afford it, pay your insurance premiums once or twice per year rather than monthly.

This can save another $50 to $100 per year.

Check with other vendors, such as credit card issuers, to see if they permit automatic payment at no charge.

Say you can save $10 per month in postage and invest it in an account that earns 5 percent annually. Over 10 years, you'll have an extra $1,258 in savings.

While we're on this subject, we've noticed more people paying cash at checkout counters rather than by credit card.

This alone can cause you to spend one-third less by eliminating impulse spending.

Invest money spent on lottery tickets each week on top of this, and you'll suddenly be surprised how financially well-off you are!

Use retirement accounts to help cut taxes, and these wealth-building tactics are compounded further.

Over time, enjoy watching these small, but simple actions make a huge difference in your family's finances.