I've had several bouts of financial planning, first one I've done for a couple of years several years ago, and to great success, even without really understanding what I was doing (as in, most of the planning involved slashing the unnecessary expenses, without actual plan for the expendures).

Even with great results once the supporting factor for it was gone (that is the girlfriend I had at the time), I kept going for a bit, and then stopped.

Another go I had after getting YNAB on Steam, which was great. Still is, although they've moved to yearly subscription model.
However, what is best about them is those videos and free step by step lessons they offer on how to actually go about planning your finances. While I am still sometimes spending a bit more than I make, things are much more manageable now, thanks to the lessons and the software.

They've broken the process into a four simple rules, which are brilliant stuff. Perhaps even something that you can modify your way of doing things, perhaps not, but it might be useful to other readers.
It goes like this:

• give every dollar a job — that is plan on putting all the income somewhere, liabilities, savings, etc.
• save for the rainy day — this one is about breaking up big yearly, biyearly etc payments into smaller pieces, as well as saving a bit for unexpected expenses.
• roll with the punches — be flexible about the budget, when required.
• live on the last months paycheck — going with the things above, after some months you'll have a buffer, that allows you to sleep better, in case things go wrong. Also really good for "paws feed the wolf" people (is there an English phrase for that?), like freelancers and enterpreneurs.

Anyhow here is a link to their method, which is explained much better than I did. That thing (the method, not the software, although it is handy) is really helping me, and perhaps it might help someone else out. :-D