Living With a Budget

While many people may mean to save and invest 10% of their salary, by the end of the month they just don't have that much left. They have good intentions, but not enough discipline.

Allow me introduce you to a well-worn maxim: Pay yourself first. In other words, take out money for saving and investing as soon as you get your paycheck, and use what's left for your other needs.

If you want to be super-organized, you might even take it a step further. You could create envelopes for your major spending categories (food, clothing, entertainment, wigs, etc.), and put the money that you plan to spend on each category in the respective envelope. Then, once your entertainment envelope is cleaned out, you're out of luck until the next payday. That way, you won't end up spending money on one thing that was meant for something else.

For more insights into budgeting, check out these Foolish articles:

• Balancing Your Budget
• Finance's Forbidden Word
• Lazy Girl's Guide to Budgeting
• Budget With Worksheets
• How to Budget
• Budgeting Made Easy
• Low-Budget Investing

For savvy ideas on how to save money, visit our Living Below Your Means discussion board. And to learn from fellow budgeters, drop in on our Budgeting discussion board.

For many more tips on how to get your life in order, financially and otherwise (including how to lop off several hundred dollars from your monthly or yearly expenses), try our brand new personal finance newsletter, GreenLight. We suspect it will pay for itself in short order.