On the recommendation of several friends, I’ve purchased You Need A Budget (YNAB) to help me create and manage a budget.
The software was only $39.95, which is significantly less expensive than other financial software packages, and focuses more on the budget than on the transactions. It also has a 60-day money back guarantee in case I end up hating it.
Unfortunately, I don’t know how much to budget for the various categories because I haven’t been paying enough attention to my finances lately. To fix this problem, I’m going to record every single purchase into the register in YNAB, and it will magically tell me what my current budget is. Once I have this info, it shouldn’t be hard to shrink the budget in a few areas and save extra money!