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"Perhaps this sounds familiar: You go to the ATM, withdraw a bit of cash, and, a day or two later, wonder: &amp;quot;Have I been robbed? Did I lose that money?&amp;quot;...only to realize that you&amp;#039;ve frittered it away. The truth is, when you don&amp;#039;t track your money, it&amp;#039;s all too easy to overspend. Studies prove that dieters who keep a food diary are more successful at reaching their goals, and savers who dutifully note each purchase see the same effect, says Joshua Klapow, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist with the University of Alabama at Birmingham. &amp;quot;In either case, self-monitoring means you&amp;#039;re more likely to do the &amp;#039;right thing&amp;#039; \u2014 eat better, spend less.&amp;quot; That&amp;#039;s where a good money-management system comes into play. Using software, a Website, or even a good old-fashioned pay-it-in-cash plan can nudge you to focus on your finances and keep more of your hard-earned money. Here are some of the best options: Financial Software Install Quicken (available at office-supply stores for $30 or $60, depending on features), and it can pull data from your financial accounts online, send you bill-paying reminders, and classify purchases into budget categories (you can also type in cash transactions). Good for: Seeing where your money goes and analyzing where to cut back. A case study: Before Erin Caffrey and her husband started using Quicken this spring, takeout was on the menu more than once a week. But when the Pittsburgh couple installed software and looked at their expenses in pie chart form, they saw that their burritos-to-go habit was a hefty slice of their food budget. &amp;quot;Now I see what a few nights of takeout means,&amp;quot; says Caffrey. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t resent my husband&amp;#039;s &amp;#039;Do we really want to order that?&amp;#039; questions like I used to.&amp;quot; Free Websites Sites like mint.com and moneyright.com are the free Web equivalent of financial software. You can easily set budget goals, from buying a house to saving for retirement; graphs and alerts help you monitor your monthly progress, says Avi Karnani, creator of the software that powers MoneyRight.com. While the sites don&amp;#039;t display account numbers, it&amp;#039;s still important to make sure your antivirus and spyware protection is up-to-date to protect this vital financial info. Good for: People who need real-time help charting where their money is going and where they&amp;#039;re overspending. Through these Websites, if your checking account balance drops below say, $25, you&amp;#039;ll receive a text message or e-mail that you&amp;#039;re close to overdrawing, helping you avoid pricey ($30 or more) returned-check fees. Accordion Folder Stash several months&amp;#039; worth of bills and receipts in an accordion folder with sections for, say, clothing, electricity, phone, and so forth. With a history of bills at your fingertips, it&amp;#039;s easier to see when recurring expenses get out of hand, says Kevin O&amp;#039;Reilly, a Phoenix-based investment adviser. Good for: Those who like working with printed versus online bills, and who don&amp;#039;t have a clue whether their expenses are trending up or down in a given category. Watching your monthly cell phone bill rise with a tween&amp;#039;s text-messaging, for example, can help you decide when to add Verizon Wireless&amp;#039;s $10 messaging plan instead of paying $20 for just 100 texts at the 20-cent \u00E0 la carte rate. Use a ledger pad to make the system even more organized. Envelope System This is as basic \u2014 and effective \u2014 as a budgeting system gets. Look at your income and your set expenses, like your mortgage and utilities. Then figure out how much you can afford to spend, max, on things like gas and entertainment, and put the cash for each category in its own envelope. Spend as you go \u2014 but remember, &amp;quot;when you run out, you run out,&amp;quot; says Ted Jenkin, a certified financial planner in Alpharetta, GA. Good for: Anyone who needs a back-to-basics approach to spending. &amp;quot;If you shop with cash, you think about what you need,&amp;quot; explains Jenkin. &amp;quot;With a credit card, it&amp;#039;s &amp;#039;What do I want? \u2014 not &amp;#039;What can I afford?&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Kelli B. Grant is the senior consumer reporter for smartmoney.com. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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