 TITLE: How to Save Money Every Month CONTENT: Create a Monthly Budget\n-----------------------\nNow that you're equipped with suggestions on how to cut your monthly expenses, how do you put it all together? Create and stick to a budget. Why is budgeting so critical? Here are four things that budgeting can help you accomplish:\n1.  Living within your means. This translates into expenses being lower than your income—allowing you to save more every month.\n2.  Achieving your financial goals. For example, you might dream of retiring at age 60 and heading to Africa to do volunteer work or paying off your 30-year mortgage in 15 years.\n3.  Eliminating debt, whether that's credit card balances, student loans, personal loans or another type of borrowing.\n4.  Saving money to set up an emergency fund, fund a college savings account or contribute to a retirement fund.\nFortunately, there's no right or wrong way to create a budget, which is designed to properly balance how much money is coming in and how much money is going out. Two types of budgets to consider are the 50\/30\/20 budgeting method and zero-based budgeting. To track your spending, which is the key to any budget, you can:\n*   Dedicate a notebook to your monthly budget.\n*   Track your income and expenses in a spreadsheet.\n*   Download an app like Mint, You Need a Budget (YNAB), Pocketguard or Goodbudget, or use Experian's Personal Finances tool (access this by logging in to your Experian account and clicking \"Personal Finances\" at the bottom of the page). END