Being responsible with your money is tough – for a bunch of reasons. Sometimes it’s because we just don’t have enough to go around. Sometimes it’s because the basics are taken care of so you’re not paying attention. Sometimes it’s because it is hard to think about the future and thinking about tomorrow tomorrow is easier.

But let’s try to be smart about money. It doesn’t have to be all scrimping and saving. It doesn’t mean you can’t ever by another fancy coffee again, it just means have a plan that works for you. And if you love your fancy coffees, then build them into the plan.

The gurus talk about a few different budgeting methods that work for different people. But here are three to try:

1. Zero Based Budget – Every dollar you bring in has a job for you. This works when you know exactly how much money you’ll have each month. You build a budget that allocates every dollar you bring in. This is hard for me, I’ll be honest. I’m not that detail-oriented. I’m much more a set it and forget it kinda girl. But if you have a lot of money anxiety and you need to know how much you can spend on X, Y, Z each month, this may be a good option for you. It gives you free rein to pick the things that matter to you and allocate an amount of money to spend on them guilt-free each month.
2. 50-30-20 Budget – Allocate your after-tax money to three categories: Needs, wants, savings. So your basics (housing, groceries, utilities, minimum debt payments) are all taken care of with 50% of your take-home pay. This works if you can be flexible in either your income or your fixed expenses. It doesn’t work particularly well for me because my wants and needs are all over the map. My monthly wants are way less than 30% of my income. My savings is less than that most months as well. But some months my wants are way more than that – I’m paying for travel or wedding stuff or something else important. It’s vaguely in my budget but I haven’t penciled it all out.
3. Envelope Budget – Literally putting money in envelopes marked each particular budget category. No more money in the envelope = no more money for that category this month. This is a much stricter and old-school method of budgeting. It’s a cash-based idea originally made popular by Dave Ramsey. I’m not a huge fan of his extreme frugality approach, but for those that really need to get back to basics and control their money, this is a decent approach. It is hard for some people that rely heavily on autopay or credit card points to pay most expenses, but with a little tweaking it can work pretty well. I’ve used this approach with a little variation to make it more functional in our non-cash-based system. Sometimes when my coffee spending is getting out of hand, I’ll buy a gift card to my favorite coffee shop and load it with X dollars per month that I’m comfortable spending on coffee each month. Once the gift card is empty, I can’t buy coffee or reload it until the end of the month. This idea also works with online purchasing. Buy gift cards or reloadable visa cards with your budget each month. Use them accordingly throughout the month until they run out.

If no one version of these budget ideas works for you, incorporate those you can. Maybe you can get your fixed costs within 50% of your take home pay but struggle to keep your wants under 30%. Use the envelope method (or gift card method) for the remaining 30% of your income.

Maybe your fixed costs are lower than 50% of your income and you want your savings rate to be higher so you can retire early or save for a home purchase or other big investment for later. If you’re 20 years old, probably your savings priority looks different from mine at 40. My retirement investing is looming a little larger today than it was at 20.

Your budget has to work for you. If you want to reduce your housing costs by taking on roommates or moving into a smaller place, that can free up more of your monthly income to save for future travel or retirement or to spend on weekly happy hours.

The idea is to reduce your money anxiety. As long as you have a plan for your savings and expenses, it’s no one else’s business what happens to your money. Make it make sense for you. Pay attention to it, be responsible with it, but make it work for you.