Where does all my money go? If you are like most people, then you must be asking this to yourself most of the time. You must have more than likely discovered, at a most inconvenient time, that yours is gone! A way to manage your finances in the most resourceful way is one of the hardest things to figure out. If you learn to manage your money well, you’ll enjoy the sense of independence that comes from being in control of your finances, instead of your finances being in control of you.

For most people, it is not how much they earn, it is how much they are able to keep. Spending more than we earn is the recipe to certain financial disaster. Yet most people do just that. The most important thing to do is ‘Organize your finances’. You need to know how much money is coming in, how much is going out, and most importantly where it's going. This is a task all too many people avoid if in debt, but avoiding your budget won't make it any better if you're not making ends meet every month, and that's one of the reasons people get in debt in the first place. Write down your monthly expenditures and break them all down as much as possible. Are there non-essentials you can eliminate? Are you spending more money than you should be on something in particular? Getting everything down on pen and paper can help show you the real picture when it comes to your finances and so help you make decisions accordingly.

There are a few basic steps one could follow to make his task easier. Firstly, identify your income sources. Your income would include job earnings, savings, gifts, grants, financial aid, money from other sources, etc. You should list all sources of money, even if you don’t consider them to be significant. Secondly, list fixed and variable expenses. It’s usually easy to list the fixed expenses. You know what they are. If you have a car payment or a home loan installment, you know how much it is and when it’s due. The same is true if you have rent, car insurance and other fixed bills. Thirdly, it’s wise to have a savings account and deposit a regular amount on a monthly basis. Even a small amount can add up to a sizable sum over time, when you add to it consistently.