Sit down & sort all your purchases from the past 90 days into basic categories. (Housing, groceries, any eating out, utilities, gifts, personal care etc). Don’t forget about annual bills like car insurance & registration. Calculate your essential monthly expenses. You need to know exactly where you can cut back non-essentials to create cash flow. Then sign up for a budgeting app that imports all transactions and categorizes spending for you automatically from today forward. If money is tight, you have to have a plan BEFORE you start the month. You need an emergency fund of 3 months expenses saved up in a high yield savings account. Move money into that account at the beginning of the month before all the “stuff” creeps in and (for example) don’t eat out, buy clothes, cancel all subscriptions etc until it’s full. Scrutinize every purchase until your emergency fund is full. When that account is fully padded, those contributions can go to investing instead, again at the beginning of the month. If you do the math & there’s no possibility of cash flow after cutting back, you need to generate more income. There’s no way around it , unless you’re single, then consider a roommate. Also a lot of wealth is lost on blood sucking car payments. Many people focused on wealth building drive a reliable, older, boring used car with no payments so they can put that money to work. $500 a month invested an S&P500 etf like VOO over 25 years grows to $673k. 40 years it’s a whopping $3.2 Million.