Living on a Budget in San Francisco

A donkey's age ago, way back in 1993, Snoop Dogg released the song Gin and Juice, which instantly became a West Coast G-funk hip hop classic (much to the delight of frat boys everywhere).  But with the seemingly materialistic chorus "with my mind on my money and my money on my mind," was Snoop actually offering advice to the Cheap Bastard in all of us?
Being a lazy bastard as well, I promptly ignored the advice until recently.  In the wake of the economic meltdown, I decided the time had indeed come to get my money on my mind.  I'm not talking just about figuring out how to get cheap rent or finding free wine in San Francisco, not that that's not important, but actually starting to track all income and expenses in my budget.  As a reader of both the Get Rich Slowly blog as well as the more ascetic Your Money or Your Life, this is something I claimed I'd get around to doing for a long time.
Finally, though, at long last, I'm happy to say that I've created a budget!  How?  Mint.com.  I highly recommend them, as they offer an easy-to-use, almost fun, site that helps you get your financial life together.  Or at least more together than the current mess you may find yourself in.  Mint's easy to use and free (of course, this ranked very high on my approval meter!).  But best of all, I've saved Cash Money already.  Thanks to it's ability to track all my expenses across multiple accounts & categories, I've stopped missing payments on bills (saved on late fees), eliminated bank "account maintenance" fees (we're supposed to pay the banks for the privelege?), lowered my long-distance fees, etc.
Definitely check it out!  Of course, any budgeting software, or even a paper adn pencil, can help you draw up a budget.  The idea is to, well, get your mind on your money, and stop spending a couple extra bucks here and a couple extra ducats there.  It adds up!
And as to whether's Snoop's real message of the song was that it's fun to drink gin and smoke Indo, well, that's still up for debate.