Talk about getting stellar investment returns and people's mouths water. Mention household budgeting and their eyes roll.

And yet, budgeting is much more likely to be the key to meeting your long-term goals like paying for college and preparing for a comfortable retirement. Most importantly: anyone can do it. You don't have to be a stock-picking wiz.

Here's an example: Let's say you want to build a $1 million fund over the next 20 years, starting from scratch. You could do it by investing about $11,500 over the next year, and increasing future contributions by 3 percent every year as your income grew. But you'd need an investment return of 12 percent every year, and it would be foolish to count on that.

Or you could reach the same goal by saving $17,500 over the next year, upping the annual savings by 3 percent a year, and getting a return of 8 percent, which isn't such a stretch.

The problem with the riskier approach - hoping for 12 percent returns - is that if it falls short it may fall short by a lot. If you got 8 percent instead of 12 percent, your nest egg would grow to just $656,000, because of the smaller annual contributions you'd made. If the more conservative approach falls short, earning 6 percent instead of 8 percent, you'd still end up with $817,000, thanks to the bigger annual contributions.

I like to preach on this subject because my wife and I have walked the walk, saving about 30 percent of our salaries for the past 20 years or so. Curbing big expenses - forgoing a McMansion and keeping our cars until they die - has been key to this. But controlling the smaller ones like meals out plays a big role, too.

A number of years ago friends of ours bought a stunning 46-foot ocean-going sailboat, despite their fairly modest salaries. They said they did it by keeping 3-by-5 file cards in their pockets and listing every expense for a few months - every bag of potato chips, not just the mortgage and heating bill. It showed where they could cut.

That's a perfectly good system. If you're computer savvy, you could use a more elaborate budgeting feature like the one at Mint.com, or the budgeting and planning features in the Quicken program.

In the example above, the more conservative household had to set aside $6,000 more per year, or $500 a month. It's a hefty sum, no doubt about it - especially as this household is already saving a lot. But $500 a month is a car payment and a few dinners out. And small amounts do add up. Our family went out for dinner the other night and four of us ordered water instead of sodas, saving about $12.

If you live with a spouse or partner, you surely don't want to bicker over every expenditure. My wife and I tried a system for a while that was a complete disaster. Since we make comparable salaries, we split household expenses down the middle, and we sat down every month to "settle up" with a pile of receipts. It got so nerve-wracking we let it go longer and longer, making each day of reckoning even worse.

A far better system, we found, is to have three checking accounts - his, hers and ours, all at the same bank with online money-transferring. I use Quicken to pay bills online. When the joint account runs low, I transfer money from my account and send my wife an e-mail asking that she match it.

Neither of us ever looks at the other's individual account. We're both proven savers; it just doesn't pay to "discuss" every personal expense.

This isn't the only way to work it, or course. Other couples put the finances on one person's hands, and others pool everything in one account and both draw from it. There's no right or wrong way to handle it so long as you do devise a system that provides for substantial saving.

Let me finish with another look at the numbers. Just suppose that careful budgeting has demonstrated that you can live well on less. That will probable be true in retirement, too. So maybe you won't need a $1 million nest egg - maybe $800,000 will do. You could reach that goal in 18 years instead of 20 - retiring two years earlier.

Jeff Brown is an experienced business journalist and personal finance columnist who has written for The Philadelphia Inquirer, The New York Times, and TheStreet.com. Read his bio to learn more about him.