Budget Wisely

All of us are pretty familiar with our expenses. "I spend about $100 here every month," " The babysitter costs X every week.."

But very few of us really narrow down all of our expenses and add them up. The numbers may shock you and you may find wonderful areas of savings and improvement.

An easy way to stay on top of this is every month or so, export all of your expenses to an Excel worksheet. Your bank will let you do this on your expense breakout page as will your credit card. That way you can sort by store, category, and/or amount.

Try looking for area such as groceries or shopping that seem just a bit too high given the other expenses in the month. Notice some unfavorable trends such as - one month your grocery bill is over $100 more than the last month, yet your eating out has also increased by $100 that month! That is a great area to improve on!