<prompt> Human: 30-day challengesWe are pleased to continue our 30-day challenge series. Past challenges can be found hereThis months 30-day challenge is to Track all spending! It is important to track your spending to avoid having lifestyle inflation sneak up on you even if you are financially comfortable. If you dont know where your money is going, you cant make intelligent choices about spending and allocating your money for maximum benefit. Here are some tips to get you started: Select your tools. Anything goes here and you should use whatever works for you. Options include pen and paper, spreadsheets, the envelope method and websites and apps such as Mint and YNAB Make a complete budget. Break your spending down into categories and capture 100 of your spending. A budget that doesnt cover major categories is not very useful and excessively broad categories can also muddy the waters. Budget categories for Savings, Retirement, Gifts, and Auto Maintenance are frequently overlooked. You can review your past spending to check what has been grouped into miscellaneous spending for too long. Stay vigilant and be thorough. Track your spending daily and check how your budget categories are doing before making a purchase. Challenge success criteriaYouve successfully completed this challenge once youve done one or more of the following things: Completed at least 30 days of tracking your spending Added one category to an already existing budget. Shared a budgeting tool not your own please! in this thread.  <response>: Ive had Mint for around 6-7 months now, but this month is the first time Im truly tracking every penny I spend. I had a very rude wake up call last month when I realized Ive averaged over 700month on food and one month where I spent almost 400 on fast food alone.Checked my bank account today and am at 80.00. Usually I would be freaking out but I now I have enough gas and food to get me to my next paycheck 15th, and I havent even spent half of my new food budget currently at 65; budgeted for 200, hoping to clock in at 150 for the month. Ive already managed to squirrel away over 300 for my every few months expenses and am hoping to trim those down as well to keep more of the money in my savings. It just feels really good finally feeling like I have control over my finances and not getting anxiety when I see my balance dip below a certain amount. Im tired of living life on the financial edge and it feels good to finally be on the right track. Heres to the first of many months of responsible spending and budgeting!! 