Tired of all your hard earned dollars going out the window?
Read on.

When people first think of personal finance their mind first goes to the matter of saving money.

There's a lot of reasons for this and in a way this does in fact make sense. 
Most people understand they're overpaying on any number of fronts.
 It also makes sense because you SHOULD first and foremost know where every penny goes before concentrating on more money.

Which of the following makes the most sense to you?
Going through every single one of your monthly expenses and trimming $200 in monthly expenses not currently applicable to you anymore (i.e. subscriptions, memberships, etc).
Or.

Taking a part-time job that, after expenses, pays you an extra $200 per month.
Hopefully it's obvious trimming $200 per month is the way to go. 
Otherwise your just working part-time to pay for those things you don't need, or maybe even know about!
In other words, you don't want to work extra hours just to reimburse yourself.

This might be a good time to address something that not enough of us account for.
Namely, while it makes sense to intentionally concentrate on opportunities for saving don't let it stop there.
Personal finance is essentially a three-legged stool (see "money as football")

Too many people, most in fact, focus entirely on saving at the expense of the other two factors (making money and investing being the other two).
Simply put, there's far too many opportunities to increase your income and bring in additional money out there.
You just can't afford to ignore it.
You have to make money to save in order to invest in the first place.

Now we're going to drill down on the subject of saving.

Similar to other sections on this site were going to go back AT LEAST TWO YEARS worth of bank statements to find out, as exactly as humanly possible,
your every expense and, insofar as possible, exactly how much this comes out to on a monthly basis.

You'll find this section a much more action-oriented than perhaps any other article on this entire website.
While there's a lot of work ahead of us, nearly all of these necessary tasks are of the “set-it and forget it variety.
That means once accomplished you don't have to do it over and over again.
 At least that's the case for most of them.

Before we go any further lets take part in a little thought experiment.
What do your monthly expenses look like right now? 
Do you even know?
Now you decide to spend eight hours a day, five days a week for a solid month dedicated to doing nothing other than examining, and re-examining every single penny you spend.
Is there any doubt whatsoever after our month long experiment you'd be spending MUCH less than if you hadn't?
No one can say how much you'll save, It will of course be different for everyone.
 But I'll bet you were talking at least 30%!
We mean EVERY expense by the way. 
Your meal planning every meal (but not starving yourself), shopping around for cell phone plans, recasting or refinancing a mortgage, scrutinizing your utility bills, removing monthly irrelevant fees/ subscriptions, etc,etc,etc.

Actually for many of you 30% might be on the low side.

It's understood you won't be able to spend that amount of time on household savings.
But there's a group of people who do nothing but spend 8–10 hours a day looking for ways to save more money while constantly trying to increase profits.

Business people. 
It's all they do all the time every single day.
You absolutely can reduce or eliminate bills to the absolute minimum.
 In fact anyone can.
Were NOT talking about cutting expenses to the point of having no outside life whatsoever.
But from here on out "fun" does have to be budgeted for.
In some cases you may even be able to free up MORE money for those things that are most important to you!

LETS GET TO WORK!
You should be armed with two years worth of every monthly expense.
Also recommended is a small notebook for EVERY expense you plan on reducing.
This means if there are six areas you plan to attack you'll need six small notebooks or a larger one that's been partitioned into at least six sections or more.

From here out there's essentially two ways to go about reducing your spending.

Number one. 
Every single expense is addressed to it's absolute minimum. 
One by one.

Number two. 
You go through every monthly bill and try to determine the most expensive ones first.
For most people a line-by-line, one expense at a time will be the most popular.
This is the one time you DON'T want to be in a hurry. 
For the sake of your financial dreams you have to be thorough. 

After you've examined every single bill you should discover all sorts of areas ripe for reducing.

If not. Go over every expense again.
 No one gets it perfect the first time. 
Ever.
Have a trusted individual go over the expenses with you. A (TRUSTED) second pair of eyes, if your really comfortable with it can't hurt either.
Remember to regularly re-examine both your monthly bills and learn more about every expense.

Also remember this.
Most people only have 8-12 monthly bills to begin with.
That means your constricted to a finite number of areas you can cut or reduce in the first place. 
  Just don't cut to the point of extreme cheap-skate Territory or just to where you start feeling scummy about it.