When working to recover from a difficult financial situation there are typically some budget changes involved, the most important of which will likely be changes to your daily expenses, and you will need to be able to adjust appropriately in the midst of bankruptcy or proposal proceedings. Below are four tips to help you manage your daily expenses.

Determine your financial goals.

Consider both your short-term and long-term financial goals. Your immediate financial goals will constitute the bulk of your daily expenses, including car and mortgage payments, utilities, phone and house bills, child care, food and so on. These are expenses that you can’t afford not to spend money on, and so everything else should be secondary.

Calculate your income and expenses.

Determining your income can be easy, but determining what you spend your money on is less cut and dry. As a helpful exercise, expenses can be broken down into three categories: Fixed commitments, variable commitments and discretionary expenses. Your fixed commitment expenses are those which you have to pay every month and the amount does not change. Variable commitments are necessities where the cost may vary from month to month, such as groceries, and discretionary expenses include the non-essentials such as your gym membership, entertainment purchases and vacation expenditures.

Analyze your spending.

There is a large selection of free apps on the market to help you monitor and control your spending. They are sometimes linkable to your bank account and will provide you with detailed summaries of where and how you are spending your money on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. Knowing where your money is going will give you better control over how you spend day-to-day and where adjustments need to be made.

Commit.

Make your daily expense budget a habit. Integrate it into your fixed commitment costs so that you know how much you have left over for variable, fixed and discretionary costs. Once you know how much you have to spend every day, you can budget appropriately.

A bankruptcy or proposal consolidation can help to relieve the stress caused by debt and with the right financial safeguards in place, you can rest assured that you are not overspending and are approaching your future financial responsibilities cautiously. If you are going through, or about to go through, a bankruptcy or consolidation, keep the above four tips in mind for managing your daily expenses and ensuring that you are getting the most out of the process.