When someone says budgets or budgeting it typically brings up a negative emotion, not excited to do it, a chore!
What if I told you?
When you budget using a planner it is fun and very useful!
I have found that planners make even the most of mundane tasks more fun!
What is a budget?
Defined a budget is an estimate of income and expenditure for a set period of time
Budgets tell you exactly how much money you have coming in(income) and how much money you have going out(expenses) and how much money you have left over (savings)
Throwback
I know that checkbooks haven’t completely gone off the scene, I still write a check for some bills and church tithes but thst is basically it. I know that the younger genrations are not utilizing checks.
For those who remember a time of banking and accounting for money prior to online banking and debit/credit cards… remember balancing your checkbook against your bank statement, that was budgeting of sorts.
Planning your budget
Once you know your inflow and outflow for each month, you can then allocate your entire income to different areas like
- Bills
- Expenses
- Food
- Car/home
- Family
- Pets
- Fun
- Spending
- Savings
- Gifts/holidays
- Vacations and treats
You will know exactly where your money is going and what it is doing every month.
Budget planning is important not only for the month you are in but also for future plans!
Different Planning methods
Many people use accounting software programs like quick books to budget plan, others use a simple excel spreadsheet while others use budget planners.
Budget Planning Worksheets
Redefine your plans offer a wide variety of planning worksheets and workbooks! We have everything from daily planners to social planners to Closet planners to budget planners
Track expenses
We all have expenses that occur each month. Some are the same, we refer to this as fixed expenses, while other expenses vary from month to month, we refer to these as variable expenses!
When tracking expenses it is important to put expenses into categories like
- Food
- Car
- Bills
- credit cards
- Loans
- Utilities
- Rent/mortgage
- tv/internet/mobile phone
- Spending/fun
- Health
- House
- Savings
At the end of each month we should tally each category for a total, this will help project our budget for next month.
Categorizing our expenses also helps us understand where our money goes every month.
You can even get fancy and figure out the percentages of each category(example50% of your income went to pay fixed expenses or bills)
Do a Savings Challenge
The Planning community have so many fun savings challenges a couple of my favorite ones are explained below
52 week challenge- save a set amount each week starting with $1.00 and ending with $52.00 each week it grows and at the end of the year you have saved over $1,000.00!!! What could you do with $1000.00?
$5.00 Challenge- each time you receive a five dollar bill back in change you save it, rather than spending it. This can lead to big savings. Last year I did this challenge and I had enough saved thst I bought a new oven with it!!!!
There are more but those 2 challenges are ones I consistently participate in! You can go to Instagram and look at the hashtags #planningcommunity #savingschallenge #planwithme #planner
Cash Envelopes
To attempt to get away from credit and debit spending many planners utilize cash envelopes and only spend cash.
For those who use a debit card you can still track and allocate funds to certain categories. Or you can use it for cash only spending or more of a hybrid approach cash and debit spending.
Cash envelope are so cute and can help track your money and spending habits.
Redefine Your Plans offers
Printable digital downloads for budgeting and planning budgets
Go here to shop all the downloads
expense Trackers
budget by Paycheck
budget worksheets
savings trackers
Coming Soon
Printable cash envelopes templates and more!