For many, there are financial payoffs, too - improved efficiencies, lower costs and increased sales of energy-saving products.

Studies have looked at the financial payoff to the large investment in time, tuition, student loans, and lost earnings.

At any rate, environmentalists say, the financial payoff from being environmentally friendly is too small to make much of an impression on the corporate mind-set.

There were no shady operators or allegations of financial payoffs.

But it matters little whether the financial payoff is direct or indirect.

With so many changes now in place, the company seems to be catching its breath as it awaits a financial payoff.

Such financial payoffs are all far in the future, though.

Whatever its technical accomplishments, a significant financial payoff of any sort for Northrop remains in an increasingly distant future.

Their financial payoffs are far smaller and more elusive than those of tennis moms.

They can be expensive and time-consuming to organize, without any assurance of a financial payoff.