As soon as I was 18, I couldn’t wait to do two things: buy a lottery ticket and get my own credit card. I lost my first $10 and gave up on the former, but I didn’t even have to try to get the latter. I got a phone call merely a few weeks after my birthday with a survey from a credit card company — they wanted to issue me my own card. Ten minutes on the phone and one week later, I had that little piece of plastic magic in my hand — and a whole new mess of troubles.

Make a budget. That’s what everyone tells you to do when you’re trying to save a buck here or there, but no one tells you exactly how to make a budget.

Back in the 10th grade we learned all about balancing checkbooks, something I’ll admit I still don’t do, and how to create a budget. Usually, these budgets insist that your spending habits can be divided into a few groups. There’s a category for your monthly bills, one for your debt, and then the last one is always just marked “entertainment.” This vague “entertainment” category was always jammed pack with the majority of my spending habits. From a night out with my friends to Broadway shows to train tickets back home to Jersey, piling all of this into one category just never worked.

This is the followup to our interview with Thrive CEO and Founder, Avi Karnani and Lead Scientist, Matt Wallaert. In our first installment, which you can read here, we talked to them about their work in financial literacy, competition with popular money management site, Mint and how they differ from other financial service companies. In this installment, we’ll find out more on behavioral budgeting and how it works, and how Thrive is working to make banking a better service industry.

The emergence of summer means many things, one of which is lots of free activities. Summer in NYC is filled with many a bargain pleasure, including free outdoor kayaking, movies, concert series and physical activities. So instead of just focusing on our past stories, we decided to spotlight a few other sites as well that focus on free and budget living information. A few of our favorite posts are below.

We recently sat down with Thrive (a free online personal finance manager) co-founder, Avi Karnani and Lead Scientist, Matt Wallaert to talk about Thrive’s offering to the rapidly evolving world of personal finance. Since we covered a lot of ground, we’re going to publish this interview in two parts: the first of which is below.

Jeremey over at GenXFinance reviewed the new Discover Prepaid Debit Card. The card is focused on teaching teenagers about controlled spending and maintaining balance limits, which is great. But what about those Gen X and Gen Y’ers who don’t trust themselves with their plastic? A good way to impose restraints on unruly spending? We think so.