I totally blew my budget...now what?

There are fundamentally two ways to make money: cut costs or earn more money. For most people, it's easier to cut costs from dumb things like eating out, premium fuel, etc (read more about saving money). I always tell people that after they track spending for 4-6 weeks and understand their spending, they should immediately cut 10% off their expenses--at least.

But I can't just cut over $400 of spending to get back on track--my budget's already pretty lean as it is. So I've got one more choice: make more money. How? I'm going to pick up a couple of small consulting contracts I've been putting off. I'm going to do some surveys that pay students to evaluate products/services. And I'm going to spend a few hours marketing another site I run (shameless plug: BitterShirts.com for funny t-shirts).

"But Ramit," you might say as I tune you out, "I don't run a t-shirt site or blah blah blah." Those are just examples. Here are a few easy steps to getting back on budget:

1. Figure out how much you're down. Once you have an amount, you know exactly how much you need to make back.
   
2. Set a time limit. Lazy-ass people say "I'll get it back sometime" while munching on a burrito (not sure why, but that just makes me think of someone lazy). Be real and set a deadline for yourself.
   
3. Make more money by looking around you. Does your boss have a small gig that he needs done? Can you pick up extra hours at work? Maybe your friends or family know some small projects on the side. Babysitting? One more thing--don't be ashamed of asking for extra work. There's nothing wrong with you for occasionally being below budget; we just have a horribly secretive culture when it comes to talking about money. Ask around--you'll be surprised. Pretty soon, you'll be back on budget.
   

Update: Success! It took me 1 month and 7 days to achieve my goal. I couldn't find any good surveys to do, but I had some good luck and actually beat my goal by about 25% due to good t-shirt sales and a couple of consulting projects.