J. Money writes for Budgets are Sexy – A laid back finance blog of a guy just trying to spice things up a bit. He also finds budgets….well…sexy! If you like what you see, pop on over and say hello. Or better yet, subscribe to his future articles or follow him on Twitter
The hard truth is that you’re not going to get out of debt or save X amount of dollars if you don’t have a surplus at the end of every month. It took me yearrrrrrrs to realize this, but I’m so freakin’ glad I did. And it’s not like I didn’t already KNOW you had to do that or anything, I just didn’t really pay attention.
Making a Change
Up until two years ago all I did was tread water and do whatever I wanted. Which was fine for someone who didn’t really care much about their future finances, but once that someone realized he DID care about it some changes needed to be made 
And as boring/repetitive as it sounds, the only way I got a handle on it all was to start tracking my money to find out what was going on.
You see, we always THINK we know how to manage our money and that we’re “not one of those” crazy people, but a lot of us are because we don’t really KNOW what we’ve got coming in and going out (aka cash flow). If you track it though, you can prove to yourself that you are on the right path and that you’ve got it on lock. But if you’re like the old me and say everything’s fine without being able to show it, I’m gonna have to doubt you
Why Track Your Cash?
Tracking allows you to see that hard number at the end – the extra money you have every month. And once you know what it is, you can then plan to pay off debt or save X amount of money or whatever else you want so much easier. Because it will be TRUE – not just a number that you *think* you have left over.
