One of the best ways to know if our actual financial situation is taking a careful control of expenses. We saw some ways to control spending on items How can I save some extra money? , Tips to help you spend less and save more, or how to budget.

Knowing exactly how we spend our money on one hand can help to identify the degree of need for each expenditure, and secondly, to know in what areas we can try to reduce spending. Our intention is to reduce spending on some things not essential to spend the money to pay off other debts or charges that we have, improving our financial situation this way twice.
Monthly spending plan

We will make a monthly spending plan. Try to make up a few days before each month to have time to make the occasional variations that can occur in both the expenditure and revenue.
Categories of expenditure

First, we will create a number of categories of expenditure as expenses and payments that we know we will have: mortgage, rent, insurance, gas, electricity, water, community neighbors, telephone, Internet, gas, maintenance of car loans and miscellaneous payments, food, clothing, school supplies, entertainment, health, personal care … and everything we know to be paid, and add a paragraph and we will call Contingencies.
Expenses not covered

In this section we will attach a small amount (eg € 50 per month) to leave remaining for any expenses not covered in our spending plan.

Some of these costs are known in advance, and some not. Among the latter, try to make a forecast as closely as possible, always trying not to be very optimistic (not to wait too down payments). We will be prudent and better calculate the higher payments that are lower then expected that the opposite, and fall short of our expenditure projections.
Minimal costs

You could set for other expenses such as food or clothing, not involving minimum losing our quality of life, sufficient to live well, but try not to exceed (for example, we put a limit to food that does not involve buying little food, but avoid unnecessary whims or expensive designer products).
Contingencies

When we have the total amount of estimated costs, we will add an extra 10% because experience tells us that there are always unforeseen bills did not expect.
Expenditure over income

Once the estimate of expenditure increased in the 10%, we compare it with our income. If they are known in advance, as usual, there will be no major problem.

If our revenues are variable, we also forecast here. But to be prudent, if not certainly know our income will sin of naysayers and put a quantity measured. One method might be to use the average of the last twelve months, unless we have more data that allow us to know beforehand how much you charge so (for example, someone who will know whether commissions charged for that month is selling a lot or little) . With experience, it will become easier to plan and to better align spending forecasts.
More revenue than expenses

If revenues are greater than anticipated costs, we will have surplus money, if the forecast is correct and includes all expenses, we can allocate to reduce our debts and credits. This is money that will take her without control of payments almost certainly spend on other things not necessary.
More expenses than income

If instead the income is less than the expenses, we must reduce certain redundant expenses such as telephone, Internet, laundry, etc.. We will have to spend less to balance the spending plan. If this situation occurs several months in a row, it would be a good time to rethink our position and move to deeper action, such as renting instead of paying mortgage, changing jobs for better income, try to reduce consumption, and so on.