Make It. Using a register [A budget].

So maybe I'm stuck in the Dark Ages where people read books by candlelight and only lived until they're 35, but I have begun to use a check register. Or, more appropriately, I have begun to record all my transactions in my Moleskine. (I love my Moleskine. That should be a post itself).

But keeping a register has really helped me keep track of my finances. Being one of the last remaining human beings to not use online checking, I need to keep track of my daily transactions, and keeping a running tally of my checking amount has helped tremendously.

It is a bit cumbersome to whip out a notebook each time you buy something, but if you make a mental note and write it down later, it gives you a more exact figure to be able to budget for.

And, when you're not near a computer it's kind of nice to have a written record of what you have spent and exactly how much you have. If you use a notebook or Moleskine you can keep important receipts in it too.

-- Lauren Williams

Photo credit: Amazon.com

Make It. Saving [A budget].

Although this post is going up today, Wednesday, Jan. 20, today I am headed down to South America to travel, live, and work.

Working a part-time job, though, can make saving for such a trip a bit rough.

The thing that made this trip doable was tiny, incremental saving. One tip I was taught was to set aside a small amount of money each week, and at the end of the year, you will have enough money for a nice trip.

Last year, near the beginning of the year, I began setting aside $20 each week. I was paid in cash, and it felt good putting the physical money away in a coffee can in the kitchen, but you can do this with automatic deposit, too.

If you were to start doing this today at the end of the year there would be $1,000 sitting in your coffee jar/piggy bank/empty planter/savings account or wherever.

Really, it doesn't take too many shortcuts to be able to scrape $20 out of a weekly budget, which makes this savings plan pretty tangible. The hard part, however, is not breaking into your savings before the year is over. Once I had saved enough for a plane ticket, I stopped saving -- bad idea. But hey, it got me this far.

-- Lauren Williams