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Microsoft Excel!  My husband uses it to track his finances, and he's now working on a joint budget for both of us. 

I think it's a good idea to sit down and figure out how much you're spending each month and how much you're bringing in.  Start with mandatory expenses:  rent/mortgage, insurance, utilities, credit card bills, student loans, groceries, etc. and then from there you can see how much discretionary spending you have. 

i use Microsoft Money but they stopped selling it.  It's nice because you can link ALL your accounts and billing to it and pay from a central place as well as run reports and track a budget (every line item on your accounts can be categorized to match your budget.  My dad's used Quicken for 15 years.

I think mint.com does something similar.  You can use excel but you may end up manually entering all your figures in which is time consuming.

The best way to determine your actual budget is to keep every receipt for 1-2 months, pile them into categories and see what you really spend.  You could also print out 2-3 months of statements and use them. Only after that do you have a good picture of where you can afford to tighten up.  You might be surprised!

I'm always amazed at how much i spend on groceries (couponing, ugh.  I need to do it!) because time constraints generally force me to just shop what I need in the moment rather than plan.

We started with the vitals (rent, bills, savings, etc) went on to necessities (groceries, toiletries, household) and we divided what was left for eating out, eterntainment, hobbies, etc. 

My best advice: the hardest part about a budget is sticking to it, especially after a mentality of "money's in the bank so I can spend it".  That's why the envelope approach is helpful at least at first because it shows that even if the money is "there", it's set aside for a particular budget item.  It helps you stay out of money binds and from over spending in one category.