First things first…

If you haven’t already done so.  It is well past time to get your financial house in order.

So lets start with the basics

1. Do you know where your spend your money?  Chances are, if your finances are out of control, you have no idea how much, or where you are spending.  How do you fix it?  Well, its pretty simple really.  For a month, write down what you spend, when you spend it.  You can keep receipts, use a credit card for everything, use online software like mint.com or something like Quicken or Money.  Any of these options work, the goal is to simply track where, and how much, you are spending.
2. Do you know how much you make?  Funny that I ask that… The reality is that if you are not on a straight salary, a lot of folks don’t really know the answer to this question.  So, just like what you spend, track it.
3. Are you spending more than you are earning?  If yes – you need to cut back – now.  Depending on how big the hole is, your cuts might be small (eat out less), medium (drop the cell phone, downgrade to dial-up) or big (move to a living situation, share an apartment, sell a car).  The key is that you must cut spending.  You can always try to go and get a second job, but lets be serious – in today’s difficult times your best bet is to cut spending.  Heck, if you can get a second job, do it, and save the money you earn to build a safety net.
4. Are you saving money?  You better be.  You should be paying yourself first.  If you can, setup automatic savings via direct deposit, or via your online banking tools.  In order to save, you may need to cut more spending out of your budget (you’ll need one of these as well).  Do it.

That is a pretty good place to start.  Once  you know how much you make, and how much you spend, you can start the process of putting together a budget.  I’ll go into that in detail in a future post.