Money Well Spent These 3 businesses made small but strategic investments that paid off big.

Funds are typically tight, so it may seem like the best idea to freeze spending even when some extra dough comes your way. Not necessarily. Here's a look at three businesses that made small but strategic investments that paid off in big ways.

$2,000
Name: Sammy Grant
Gig: Founder, SG Financial Advisors
Stats: An Atlanta-based financial advisory firm founded in 2005; four employees
What for: A second monitor for each computer and a high-performance scanner

Rationale: Grant and his team decided to make the move to a paperless office, and to do so required having multiple files open simultaneously on their computers. "We would need to have a trading application and a client's file open," Grant says. "There was no way to do that with just one screen, and we didn't want to have paper files all over the desk." Within a few months, the firm was able to downsize its space to exclude room for housing paper files. The reduction in rent paid for the monitors within one month.