Ok, if you are dealing with paying back student loans and it is causing a financial burden, you should be on a budget already. You'll never tackle the student loan and the often accompanying credit card and personal loan debt without wisely managing your money.

Budgets should include income, spending, accelerated debt repayment and savings components.

Most "Get Out of Debt" gurus recommend saving money first for emergencies before paying off any debt. The figure varies but $1000 seems to be a common amount.

The problem is, how do you save that much money when every dollar you make is going toward keeping your head above water.

One answer I recently found was the Way2Save program at Wachovia. I believe B of A calls their program Keep the Change and most larger banks probably offer a similar program.

With Way2Save, every time my wife or I use the debit card or make an automatic payment, Wachovia deducts $1 from our checking account and moves it to our Way2Save account. At the end of the year we get a larger than average interest payment on it. We can also transfer $100 per month to the account.

With Keep the Change, B of A simply rounds your purchase up to the next highest dollar and puts the difference in a high interest savings account.

This is a stealth way to save if you use a budget, all you do is either add one dollar to the purchase amount or round the amount up, depending on your bank.

While it may be hard to set aside $30, $40 or $50 a month in one chunk, setting aside no more than $1 at a time is actually pretty easy. We haven't missed it and we have saved almost $300 since the end of August.

I know that isn't an Earth-shattering amount, but for many people it can mean having some savings and no savings. Over time it could reach that $1000 that most experts say is the minimum emergency savings you need.