<prompt> Human: I am in a great mood today and want to try to spread some confidence. I know life can be hard, and finances makes it a lot harder than it has to be. My wife, myself, and our 3 month old baby live on a single income with no assistance other than renting a house that is based on my income. I make about 33,000 a year with base salary, benefits, and commissions. Yes, we may not be in the best situation, and we dont have the most or nicest things, but even with our low income its still possible for us to live, and even save! We pay close to 300 extra on my car every month and expect to pay it off next summer 3 years short of maturity. Most importantly though, we are happy.Im no expert, and nowhere near perfect but here are some tips I have for budgeting: Actually do it every month, there is no way you can just copy and paste it from month to month Keep it simple, we like to line item everything we have, instead of food 600 we have groceries 300, monthly restaurant 26, emergency fast food 30, farm produce 24, and so on. When you have a small line item you are more careful with what you have on paper Keep an overflow, but not too much. We usually keep about 50 each month for that inevitable oh no, I forgot I need an oil change! Once you get really good at planning you wont need it as much, but that peace of mind makes budgeting seem easy. Trust your budget. Once you get it down dont hold your payments until the last second, just mail that check!If we can do it, anyone can do it! You just have to believe in yourself and stick to your plan. Nail that budget down, eat at home as much as possible, be thrifty, and learn to say no to that new TV. You guys got this, together we can all win at this money thing!Edit: Thank you for all of your kind words! A few people have asked for me to lay out the budget so here it is . This month is a pretty big month for commissions so we decided to have a bit of fun and buy a few things that weve been wanting for a few months. The non-recurring stuff is most of that, and we are going to go on our first date since the baby so we pumped the restaurant budget up a tiny bit. Its important to have a bit of fun from time to time!Edit 2: I use Everydollar to budget. I used Mint for a little while but I found Everydollar to be easier to use. Linking your bank account seems like a good idea, but in my experience having the delay hurt me a lot, so I ended up manually entering everything anyway.Edit 3: A few FAQs. How do you get internet for 4.99 a month? I work for an ISP and reimbursed for the majority of it. The mobile phone is also mostly paid for by my employer which is why its so cheap for 2 lines. Both of these were factored into my benefits. How is your rent and utilities so cheap? I live in Tennessee which I think is one of the cheapest places to live in America. The duplex we live in is normally 564 a month, but it is based on income so we pay 444. Electricity is the only thing we have to pay for in it because there is no gas, and each duplex shares a water meter, so they cant split it between the 2 units. The place isnt very nice Im not going to lie, but until I can get my income up were going to stay here and save as much as we can. Why DotA 2? Because its fun, and I like the tracking that comes with DotA Plus subscription. How do you eat so cheap? My wife is extraordinarily good at shopping for deals, Aldi is great if you live near one! We eat different stuff every week because she only buys stuff that is on sale. We eat well and healthy too, tonight we had pork chops and Brussels sprouts. Also small stuff like buying whole chickens and cutting them yourself saves quite a bit of money. We spend about 20 for 4 chickens, which is about 6 meals worth of meat.Edit 4: Thank you kind stranger for the gold! In true DotA fashion Thanks for the gold!Assistant: Is your 33k gross or net? If its gross, thats a pretty low wage. Our entry level hires that stock beer in grocery stores make that much at my company, and they get benefits and 401k. If you have some experience at all, you should try and move on and increase your earnings. Human: 33k gross. Where I live has a surplus of people in my field because of a local community college that excels in the field. I am working on getting salary up, I work for a small company and havent been with them for a year yet, and I graduated from college last December. I would like to get paid more, and frankly am definitely worth more, but I like the company and the culture more than working for a bigger corporation with less freedom.  <response>: sounds like you have a good handle on your career trajectory, good luck! 