Create a simple budget.

“I'd noticed that through the past few months, we had one category, labeled "Household," where we constantly overspent. And - no matter how much money I put into that category, it still wasn't enough. It was driving me nuts. And to be specific, we're talking spending upwards of $500/month on "Household" expenses when I KNEW that we couldn't possibly be spending that much on toilet paper and paper towels (what the category was supposed to be for in the first place). And you know what that meant? It meant I was cheating! I was putting a bunch of random expenses in there that didn't fit - almost to "hide" that extra spending. [...] So, I took a good hard look at all the purchases in that category over the past few months and was relieved to see that it {mostly} wasn't me just going out and buying loads of stuff we don't need - it was stuff we actually did need [...] but I didn't have anywhere in the budget to put them, so I'd been using this "Household" category as a catch-all. [...] This meant that I was able to create a new monthly budget with a more accurate representation of our spending. Getting specific with these categories helped me figure out how to cut our spending and (as a bonus!), I felt my anxiety decrease about where that money had been going every month.”