As summer begins to fade into the rearview mirror — and with it all the barbecues, cookouts and stops for ice cream — many of us may be heading into fall with a renewed focus on eating healthy and shedding a few pounds. Similarly, it’s quite likely many will also be looking to tighten their belts financially.

Recent studies have found that physical health and fitness is the number one priority of most Canadians, followed closely by personal financial issues. That the two issues are so important to so many of us comes as little surprise. What’s interesting is that both can be tackled with similar approaches.

Whether you want to slim down your waistline or fatten your wallet, the first step toward success is creating a budget. In terms of physical fitness, that means determining your calorie budget. The simplest rule in losing weight is that if you burn more calories than you consume, your body will burn stored fat to make up the deficit. In order for that to happen, you need to calculate how many calories you burn on an average day and then aim to eat a few hundred calories less than that.

At its core, your personal financial situation works in much the same way. If you calculate how much you earn and then how much you spend, you can figure out where you can cut back to bring your spending below budget. Once you do that, your savings will begin to grow.

The bottom line is the key to both a healthy body and a healthy account balance is learning exactly what is going in and how much you’re burning.