<prompt> Human: Me and my girlfriend have to start doing some serious budgeting. With our minimum incomes we get a lot of overtime minus bills it comes to about 900.Could we live off that? The 900 would be going to Groceries, Entertainment, Gas, Clothing, Dogs, etc.We spend a lot more than that now mostly due to overtime which isnt always a guarantee so our expenses fluctuate a lot.Then were going to try and pocket the overtime and put it into savings to start up an emergency fund. Thought I should ask you experts of course.Edit: If there is anyone that lives like this any insight into how you budget your money would be really appreciatedAssistant: Simple math problem. Set down and add up all of your monthly bills, including grocery shopping. If that answer is less than 900, then your answer is yes. If its over 900, then go back and look at your expenses and see if there are luxury areas that you could cut to get the number down. Human: Ive done it before but somewhere in the month it just all goes to hell. Should I just keep every receipt or is there a good app? Or should I just budget flexibly weekly or keep it to categories like Ill only spend 300 in groceries kind of thing?  <response>: Another good tip to prevent random spending: My brother is the sole provider for his wife and 2 daughters wife is a stay at home mom. He specifically wont touch his debit card unless its an approve weekly shopping trip. He gets himself an amount of cash each week that hes comfortable spending I think 20 and puts in it in his wallet. If its not the weekly grocery trip, then all spending comes out of that 20. When its gone, so is his spending. 