If you have student loans, make sure you pay those every month. Many (but not all) lenders offer an immediate interest rate reduction if you sign up for direct debit, and another reduction or a rebate if you make so many months of on-time payments. Also, think long and hard before you decide to consolidate because you can lose out on those incentives. Talk to someone at your bank who has dealt with student loans to work out the numbers before you do anything.
In fact, your bank is often a good source of information and advice. A credit union is even better. Take advantange if you need to.
Get a copy of Quicken or the equivalent to track your finances. You can’t figure out where you are going unless you know where you’ve been.
You can download all of your banking and credit card transactions in seconds. It might be tricky to categorize them properly at first but after a while you’ll get used to it.
Back in the old days, assuming you reconciled your checking account monthly, you were in some ways forced to review things periodically. That doesn’t happen so much now with direct deposit and debit card transactions predominating.
Housing is one of your biggest expenses that is locked in every year. Can you find a decent roommate to share expenses? You may not LOVE living with someone else, but if you can tolerate it, try. Personally, I have had pretty good luck with housemates in my life, but, I am busy and gone a lot (the very best attribute a housemate can have).
If you have any fun skills that are also hobbies - like, for example, you play the guitar, are good at drawing, or swimming or soccer, can make pottery, or jewelry, or you knit – see if you can find a side job teaching said skill. For the amount of work you have to do, the pay usually blows all other part time jobs out of the water – and you usually get discounts on your hobby by working for a hobby-related business.
I used to teach horseback riding as a side job - I really enjoyed it… A friend of mine taught water aerobics. A third friend coaches soccer. You may not have these specific skills but there’s probably something you can do that others want to learn.
Its also really easy to get that first job and say “wow, this is a lot of money, I can’t possibly spend all of this money.” Trust me, you can and with that attitude you will. Or another thing running through your head “I make $xx,xxx a year, I can certainly afford $xxx for that.” Yeah, do that a few times and you’ll be wondering where all your money went.