Before you can stick to a budget, you have to make a budget, and before you do that, you should grab a pencil and paper and make a cash flow statement for yourself. Ack a Cash Flow Statement??!! What's That?!! Relax its pretty simple and straightforward..
The first step is to record your income (also known as cash inflows) for a set time frame (usually a month works best). Income can be from various sources, like wages, salary, interest, or social security.
The next step is to list your expenses (cash outflows). These outflows can be deductions from your paycheck like Federal and state income tax, charitable donations, Medicare, employee healthcare costs, and social security withholdings.
Additional outflows can be broken down into two groups, Fixed Expenses and Variable Expenses.
Fixed Expenses consist of:
Rent
Loan Payments (Car and Student Loans)
Cable/Internet Bill
Insurance (Car/Life etc.)
Variable Expenses are:
Groceries
Dining Out
Clothes
Electricity
Personal Care
Cell Phone Bill
Entertainment
Now hopefully the inflows are higher than the outflows! If the inflows are higher, you can allocate where you want your surplus money to go every week/month so you are sure to not spend it. Remember .. Pay Yourself First!! Set up those automatic deposits into your accounts.
If your outflows are more than your inflows, other then probably having that "WOW" moment as you see where your money goes, realize those expenses are up to you to change. Try to lower your expenses to increase your surplus. You can start little, like not going out to eat as much, or go hard core and get that money into your accounts, by moving into a smaller house/apartment. Up to you to decide, but making a personal cash flow statement is the first step to getting control of your money!
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