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30 Days to a better man<br />
6. Keep track of spending. After you’ve created the budget for the<br />
month, keep track of every single penny you spend to ensure that<br />
you stay within your budget. Keeping track of your spending will also<br />
come in handy when you make next month’s budget. You’ll be able<br />
to review how much you spent the previous month and adjust your<br />
budget accordingly. One of the best ways I’ve found to keep track of<br />
your expenses is Mint.com. You can connect your bank account to<br />
Mint, and each week you’ll get a report telling you how much you’ve<br />
spent on groceries, gasoline, etc. It can be very helpful and eye-opening<br />
to see your expenses broken down into a color pie chart; you may<br />
be surprised about what portion of your money is going to things like<br />
eating out. And you don’t have to worry about security; they use the<br />
same security measures as online banking systems, and it’s read-only<br />
anyway, meaning if someone did get in, they couldn’t withdraw or<br />
move funds.<br />
One of the best old-school methods of keeping track of your<br />
budget is to put the money you budgeted for certain things like<br />
groceries into envelopes. You only use the money in the envelope<br />
when making purchases for that thing. When the money<br />
runs out, you’re done spending in that category for the month.<br />
7. Review your budget every month. Each month, go over last month’s<br />
budget to see how you did. You’ll be able to see where you did well<br />
and where you can improve. After you review, repeat the whole process<br />
and make next month’s budget.<br />
Tools For Budgeting<br />
Below, we’ve created a short list of budgeting tools that you can use to help<br />
you get started with your budget. What’s nice about all of them is that<br />
they’re free!<br />
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