Same day loans, also known as payday advance loans, have become commonplace in America. In any town, and in some places, in every neighborhood, you will find a payday loan company. While the people who run these payday loan companies will tell you that they are offering a service to their community, same day cash loans are truly a disservice to the community. The loan companies certainly want it to be as easy as possible for you to use their services. They are even online payday loans available to use. But just because they are convenient doesn’t mean they are a good idea. You can break the cycle of same day loans.

Payday loans/same day loans would not exist if there were no need for them. What we need to do as a community is better educate people on money management. If people were able to handle their money, create a budget and live within their means cash loans would be a thing of the past. The question is how do we help people learn to better manage their money?

The recent economic downturn has begun to show away for many Americans to live a different life in relationship to the money. Being frugal has become fashionable again. So, many people have the desire to live a more frugal life, but the question is do they even know where to begin?

The first step to frugality is a simple step. You need to understand where your money goes each month. In order to reach this understanding all you need is to collect all of your monthly bills and expenses and sit down and list them out. This can be overwhelming in and of itself. To help you sort through this you should list your bills and expenses by importance. What is the most important bill that you have very month? It’s probably your rent or your mortgage. Of next importance are food, utilities, transportation — these are the next most important bills that you have every month. From there it just continued to rate your bills and expenses in order of importance.

You’ll find is you get farther and farther down the last that somehow these expenses are as important as the ones at the top of the list. With any luck, you’re looking at this magazine subscriptions or your restaurant expenses for the month and thinking to yourself I’m spending too much money on these things. And that’s really the key to listing out your expenses. You get to see where your money goes each month. And truly this knowledge is power. It’s the power to begin to change your relationship to money.

If you can get to the place where you have money left at the end of the month, suddenly you don’t need cash loans. Same day loan services could become a thing of your past. Learning to manage your money happens one step at a time. If you can take this first step of actually understanding where your money goes each month, you’ve taken the single most important step in learning money management. Luckily it’s a simple step, and one that you can repeat as often as you need until this lesson begins to sink in.

You can free yourself and your friends from the cycle of payday loans with this simple tool. Knowing your monthly expenses, and listing them out in order of importance can be a life-changing exercise. So consider taking the hour or two out of your day but you’ll need to complete this simple exercise. It may well set you on the road to wealth.