When I came into a similar position , I made an excel sheet where I put down all of my income and expenses in categories . This way you can see where you are spending a lot of money on , and should reduce hint your phone bill is ridiculous . I pay 21 , 50 a month . You can either assign X amount per month to pay off debt , or you can monthly deposit the amount you have left . When creating and managing budget it ' s very important to also do your decimals , otherwise you will still have a relatively high amount of money going somewhere you can ' t see . I now came up to the point where in stead of paying off debt , I deposit 100 per month into my savings account . I know exactly what I can spend when I look at the excel sheet and I can fill it out in about 5 minutes a week . Good luck !