JohnRunchey.com

The most vital component of success in savings and eventual wealth building is controlling your outgo as compared to your income.
 
To a large extent, it truly isn't 'what you make' (income), it's 'what you keep' (income - expenses) that is important.  
 An extreme example of this is Mike Tyson. Over the span of his boxing career he made over 300 million dollars - yet he ended up filing bankruptcy, being over 27 million bucks in the hole. 
 
For us mere mortals that are earning typical incomes, managing our expenses is relatively easy if we have a little bit of discipline. It's really quite simple:

• record every dime you spend
• work on getting the total comfortably below your income so you can divert money to savings

"What, watch every penny? I just need to make more money, that's the problem!" 
Sure you can work on getting your income up as well, but as it rises, if you aren't managing expenses, the expenses will just rise to match your income. Trust me, they will.
 
How to track all these expenses in your life, both big and small? There is one software application I have found that excels for this purpose. It is called "You need a budget", and is available at www.youneedabudget.com. They call it 'YNAB' for short. 
 
This is wonderful software for planning, recording, and tracking your spending. It's beauty is its simplicity - if you've ever used quicken or microsoft money, with their bloated feature set, you'll be refreshed by the simplicity of the 'YNAB' way.
 
YNAB is a bit of a methodology shift for ex-quicken users. It isn't so concerned with account balances per se; its focus is purely from a cash flow perspective. To sum it up in one phrase, this is the fundamental philosophy of YNAB:
 
Starting with the total of your take-home pay for the month, give every dollar a job - rent, utilities, groceries, eating out, snickers from the vending machine at work - and then track and follow that plan for the month.
 
To expand on that, YNAB operates on 4 fundamental principles:

1. Stop living paycheck-to-paycheck. Build up a buffer so you are living on  last months income (yes this can take some time to build up to)
2. Give every dollar a job (a spending plan for the month)
3. Prepare for rainy days (plan for the inevitable unexpected expenses by saving for them)
4. Be flexible as things change throughout the month (adjust and tweak since no month is exactly as planned) 

 
Sounds easy enough, doesn't it. Believe me it isn't as simple as it sounds - those little things like the candy bar at work and the doughnut you just feel like having in the morning really add up to surprising amounts.
 
I've been using YNAB for about 3 months now - the feeling of getting control over my spending, of being in charge of my dollars instead of them being in charge of me, is wonderful. 
 
Check it out if you want to get ahead of the game financially.  Recording everything you spend isn't confining, it is actually liberating - you'll feel like you suddenly have more money available as your needless expenses drop.
www.youneedabudget.com/