Most of us don't have a clue how much money we spend and what we spend it on. We spend it until it's gone and hopefully we can find some more to spend.

The conventional wisdom is that, if you want to know the details of where your money goes, you keep track of every penny in some sort of ledger. This is by far the most effective way to handle this problem.

There's that horrifying word. The one that makes so many people cringe at it's very utterance. It seems like they could make a very good spooky movie with the title "You Have To BUDGET!".

Yeah, that's a little dramatic but I have been helping people with their personal finances for almost 30 years and it's not too far off base. The word scares the daylights out of some people.

You should see their faces when I tell them they are already budgeting no matter whether they have anything written down or not. It's a fact.

How can you decide how much you have for bills and expenses when your paycheck varies from one payday to the next? That's a question a lot of people struggle with.

A few of the occupations that I can think of off hand that could fall into this category are waitresses or waiters working for salary and tips, truck drivers that are paid by the mile and never know how many miles they are going to get, the self-employed that their business income varies from season to season, and the list could go on.

With ever increasing consumer debt more of us are finding ourselves robbing Peter to pay Paul each month.

We go through our bills and find that the money just won't stretch far enough to cover all of the bills and expenses. It's hard to decide who you should pay when you have one bill that is stamped with "Final Notice" and you are behind on several of your other bills.

If you don't pay the credit cards you know that you are going to start getting those harassing phone calls. If you don't pay the house payment you are looking at foreclosure. If you don't pay the utilities they will shut them off. How do you decide?