While Ben is on vacation this week, enjoying money that he wisely saved throughout the year, here are 6 easy steps by which you can start improving your financial situation, today. There is nothing super special or secret about the following but by giving some thought to them, I know that your finances can improve.

1) Take inventory You gotta figure out what you’ve got laying around before you can pack your bags heading towards your better financial future. What kind of debt are you in? Student loans? Credit card debt? $5k, $25k? What’s your income situation like? Are you getting as many hours as you could at work or are there any side projects that you could be working on? What’s your monthly salary right now? Any chance of that improving in the future? For me, I’m helping my wife work on some student debt leftover from college. My monthly income is solid, but I’m hoping to achieve a promotion at work in the coming months.

2) Know where you want to go It’s important to know where you want to end up before heading out. Be completely debt free? Have a solid emergency fund (3 to 6 months of expenses) set aside? Be able to lay down a couple grand for the down payment on that house you’ve had your eyes on? Have enough income and discipline so you’re not living paycheck to paycheck or to have financial peace of mind? In my case, I want to be completely debt free and to buy into solid investments that will benefit me down the road.

3) Learn to keep track of your expenses, make a budget! You’ll never achieve the financial goals you’ve laid out in step 2 without keeping track of your money. Check out this article on budgeting, it illustrates how crucially important and also how easy it can be! Mint.com is a super easy to use and powerful resource for tracking your money. I’d recommend actually maintaining a budget in a spreadsheet software (that’s what YoungMoneyFinance himself uses).

4) Read, learn and memorize my 3 cardinal rules of personal finance. They are quite simple but so often we forget the simplest things.

5) Do at least one of the following this next week: carpool into work with a friend, cut out at least one $3 latte from your morning routine, pack your lunch instead of buying or order water instead of something else at dinner one night. I know that all of these things seem trivial but hey, baby steps in the right direction! The following week you can try another one, the following week another and before you know it, you’ve created a new habit of saving money!

6) Email ben [at] youngmoneyfinance.com or leave a comment here with any topics that you’d like to see an article on, help me help you!

Finally, if you enjoy this blog then probably other people will too! Spread the word! Consider putting one of my articles or a link to my blog on your Facebook page! Take care and I’ll see you when I get back from my vacation! -Ben