EC Life Planner For Budgeting (VIDEO)
An Erin Condren Life Planner is good for more than just keeping your calendar.
All the extra space lends itself to organizing so much more, hence the word LIFE.
And one of my very favorite things to track in my EC Planner is our home budget.
Tracking our money in and out on paper has saved our family hundreds of dollars a month.
So that means springing for this pricey planner definitely pays off for me.
When I received my first Erin Condren Planner, it was love at first sight.
There were so many extras that I wasn't expecting.
And that's what makes me especially adore Erin Condren.
After playing with the planner for a few weeks,
I developed a pretty good system for using every single page to track really useful things:
- menu plans
- health progress
- Bible verses
- prayer requests
- gift-giving
- Christmas spending
- home budget
Moving so many of my notes and tracking into one central place was so handy for me.
Now everything was in one place, portable, and easier to track.
Most notably, now keeping our home budget in my life planner was a game changer!
I started enjoying recording receipts, paying attention to incoming bills, and doing all that important money stuff.
IS IT WORTH DOING BUDGETS WITH PEN & PAPER?
Does it take time to do this on paper? It does.
But when you take time to stop and pay attention to your money habits, that's when you start saving money!
So it's worth it to me to do this the old fashioned way.
AND I think it's fun when I get to do this in my pretty, durable planner.
TRACKING PAYDAYS
At the beginning of the planner, I track our paydays in the yearly calendar.
TRACKING MONTHLY SPENDING
In each month section, I log receipts for flexible spending categories like:
- food
- eating out
- cars
- miscellaneous
TRACKING YEARLY BUDGET
At the back of the planner, I use one blank spread to track:
- recurring monthly bills
- recurring quarterly bills
- monthly savings
- extra savings
- savings spending You can see I don't get real fancy here.
I'm just making categories and tracking money for each.
No crazy stickers, washi tape, etc. etc. Just my notes mostly.
CUSTOMIZING YOUR OWN BUDGET TRACKING
As you can see, I use blank pages in the Erin Condren Life Planner to set up most of my budget keeping.
Some may prefer a pre-made budget book.
But I find that those are never exactly what I want.
When I create my own categories and tracking systems on paper, they work perfectly for my own needs.
No irrelevant sections to skip over or change.
And yes, each year I tweak my system to make it better and better.
That's why I most love getting a new planner each new year!
Here's a video to explain more about my budget tracking.
ORDER YOUR VERY OWN LIFE PLANNER
If you'd like to start tracking your budgets on paper in an Erin Condren Life Planner,
you can get $10 off your first planner with our referral link below!
Just set up your EC account and then check your email for the $10 code.
Happy planning, happy budgeting, and most importantly...happy saving!
