Pay-day-loans

Quicken or Microsoft Money work well, and you can use them to help plan for the future, too, which is really cool. You can watch your loans decrease over time, and play around with different payments and interest rates to see how you can pay one off quicker. You can use them to make a budget and track retirement accounts as well. You can choose to use as much or as little of the program as you want. I think they are pretty inexpensive, also. They are a bit of work to set up, but since it is the beginning of the year, the sooner you do it the better. The other thing you could do is just sit down with your checkbook and some paper. Start keeping track of every dollar that you guys spend to see where the money goes. That is the first step. After that, figure out what your monthly living expenses are- just the bare minimum- housing, utilities, insurance, groceries, etc. Don't forget to figure in annual or semi-annual expenses like registering your car, or car maintenance, and car insurance. Then figure out where you can trim- movies, coffee runs, dinner out, clothes, whatever you are buying that you can live without. Give yourselves an "allowance" in CASH that you each can spend each month or each pay period. After that money is gone, you can't spend anymore on non-essentials until your next allowance. Once you get things under control, you can start working on paying off debts/loans (boy is that rewarding- especially when it is all paid off!), and can increase your savings, and then increase your allowances as needed. It's not easy, and it takes time, but being realistic about your spending is the best place to start. Good for you for wanting to get out of the debt trap. It is a hard thing to do, but definitely worth it. I wish you the best of luck! =)

The best way I've come up with is to write out (or use Excel) to make a timeline of when each bill is due and when the paychecks are deposited, so that you can figure out which bills can be paid after the second paycheck of the month. If all of your bills are due at the beginning of the month, some companies will let you change the due date to space them out. Also, plan out how much is going to be spent on groceries, eating out, clothes, and gas each month. (This is the hardest part for us) Then, each month, track how much you are actually spending, with the date, so you know where the money's going. Good luck!!! It is not easy, but worth it.

H.,

That's a tough one. I'm a single mother myself who gets no child support or government assistance. Money gets to be very tight. Child care alone almost kills me. I've caught myself using those services myself lately.

I don't know of any software programs. The only thing I can suggest is if you have an excel program, set up some sort of budget in there yourself. Also, try to find a way to cut some corners if at all possible.

I use Quicken to track expenses. You can buy it online at quicken.com for $29.99 for the basic version.