Years ago my husband and I started writing down everything we spent and put the items in a category i.e. food, gasoline, insurance, mortgage, utilities, miscellaneous, etc. After keeping track for a year, we made a yearly budget and now we do this every December for the next year. It turned out to be kind of fun and we are financially better off for it. He retired at age 55 and I semi-retired at age 56. Yeah!