Don't just pay your bills — pay attention

If you're looking to build a cash cushion, sock away some savings and get ahead of your bills, it's not a matter of sacrificing that $5 latte. It's about paying attention.

What does it cost to be you? Before he discusses investing a single dollar, Joe Lum, a certified financial planner in San Ramon, Calif., steers the first conversation with a client by asking "What does it cost to be you on a monthly basis?"

Some people may feel that managing money with a budget seems like following a diet to lose weight — making sacrifices and restricting behavior.

"It's almost punishing yourself," Lum says, "but it really doesn't have to be that way."

Knowing what you spend, monitoring those expenses regularly and avoiding falling back into old habits are the keys, he adds.

"Most people create a budget, not knowing how they spend money," says Adam Hagerman, a Maryland-based certified financial planner. He says food expenses are often the "most out of whack" based on pre-budget.

Occasional, but essential, expenses. Anticipating non-emergency, but still necessary, occasional expenses and setting aside money in advance can help you avoid dipping into long-term savings, such as for retirement, or tapping funds dedicated to true emergencies.

Hagerman helps clients build such cash cushions by creating "monthly rollover categories" of essential expenses.

Mindful spending. Hagerman believes it's essential to see what you've spent in the past 30 days.

To curb discretionary expenses — those wants rather than needs — he suggests setting aside cash buckets.

However, rather than the old-fashioned envelopes of cash dedicated to one category of spending or another, Hagerman is intrigued by a service called Qube Money.

It is a debit card with a zero balance until you allocate specific amounts to common budget categories. You authorize purchases in advance to be pulled from a digital envelope, called a Qube, before using the card.

Other budgeting apps, such as PocketGuard, Mint and You Need a Budget, use different strategies to track spending.

'Vote' for expenses you want to keep. Lum says that one of the biggest ironies is that we are urged to automate investing and saving. But the same hands-off approach to spending, such as recurring bill pay services, ApplePay and online purchases, can cause you to be unaware of where all your money is going.

"You could go seasons and seasons of your life without ever noticing that you haven't actually saved any money," Lum said.

He recommends temporarily turning off autopay services so that you can "vote" for the expenses you want to keep.

Lum says once you've paid yourself first, then accounted for fixed expenses, you'll be free to spend as you please, rather than feeling guilty about every little thing you're buying. The goal, he tells clients, is to save 40 cents of every take-home dollar and pay the essentials.