To keep yourself and family from sleepless nights due to debts, start budgeting your finances with special interest on decreasing debts. Write down in your budget pad or software every debts you have, even the small ones. Number them according to importance. Between a house mortgage and a car mortgage, label the house mortgage as 1. When someone tries to lose weight, the more they track what they are eating and how much they exercise, they better they do. The same goes for keeping a budget because it is very easy to eat something unconsciously as spending money unconsciously as well. Financial planners say people are often surprised to see where their money is really going each month. The problems inherent in alignining projected sales and expenses, analyzing a business for profit and cost projects against multiple dimensions and producing accurate projections outstrip the capabilities of most budgeting and forecasting systems. Therefore, budgeting and forecasting, which is the focus of much important attention in today's business world, should be given enough value and attention for a beneficial outcome. As early as 1990, some organizations in countries like the USA and Australia implemented this new budgeting program to replace the old and known method of budgeting, the "line item budgeting." Activity based budgeting is a method of budgeting in which activities that incur costs in each function of an organization are established and relationships are defined between activities. You don't have to deprive yourself of everything that you enjoy, but cutting back a little will help. Using coupons at the grocery store, and shopping for sale items will help cut your grocery bill. You can also limit your entertainment expenses by watching movies on video so the entire family can enjoy the movie in a price of one. You will also see the incoming and outgoing of cash that occur weekly, monthly, quarterly and annually. You will understand if your expenses are too high and your savings are too low to meet your financial needs that allows you live comfortably. From this initial picture, you can then forecast your expenses for the coming year.