Money Mondays: 5 Tips for Managing Your Finances (even when they’re an overwhelming mess)

I rarely cover personal finance, but since this is a lifestyle blog that touches ever other aspect of my life, I thought I’d do a quick Monday post with some personal finance tips and tricks I’ve picked up recently.

After reading Lifehacker and The Financial Diet over the past few months, I’ve really become interested in taking a good, long look at all things money. Specifically, my money. While I’m far from an expert (and my finances are still a bit wobbly), here’s a few things that have helped me get a grip.

Tackling Personal Finance Goals

Last month I started tracking my finances. It might not sound like a big step, but I wanted to get a better look about where all my money went each month. I won’t go too deep into details, but I thought it might be interesting to veer off the path of my usual food and beauty posts and do a quick personal finance article instead.

While I love lifestyle blogs (like The Londoner, for example), I’m also a huge, huge fan of personal finance sites. As someone with lots of student debt, I find it fascinating to read about how others tackled similar problems. Some of my favorites include The Financial Diet and posts on Lifehacker.

One of the things these blogs always advocate for is to track your spending. And for the longest time, I thought I was doing just that. Sure, I wasn’t writing down every little thing I spent money on, but I checked my online banking daily, and had a budget in place. That was good enough, right?

Wrong.