Hey everyone! So as promised, I’m sharing some organizing projects–well I don’t if you could call this an organizing project–I call it my Budget Binder. So, let me show you what I have, incase you’re interested or maybe you were thinking about getting more on track about those things and want some ideas. So let’s see what we got.
Now you’ll notice that it’s not a budget planner where you make sure you only still in a certain price range and it’s not something you would need for a business. It’s more a family home. I’ve had this for a while and so far it’s working great for us.
So this what you’ll see when I open my planner. It’s just a binder with inserts. I got this binder from target, that cost me eight dollars, so not just a whole lot and the rest I just found lying around the house. Now there are cheaper binders and they will work just as great, but I’ve always loved these. It’s the Avery brand and I know that Avery makes binders that done all look like this one. And it seems like I can only find these at target. But I feel like it’s more durable and defiantly prettier–in my opinion. I used the same one for my wedding planner and it worked so great, I had to get the same one for this project. (I might do a blog on how I set up my wedding planner, incase the ladies are interested.) But before I bought this binder I just used one I had in the house and it was not a pretty binder, but it worked. 
So I keep my sheets in the front of the binder so the first thing I see is neat and pretty. (You can download these sheets for free on my website.) And if it’s neat it keeps me motivated to keep up with it. Now maybe you’re not the one who keeps track of your expenses, so you might consider setting up a non-girly planner for your husband. If that’s the case then you can follow the same guide lines, but of course give it a plain look. But either way it still works if you need a system to keep track of these things, a binder works, you just have to set it up according to your needs.
I used dividers to separate the categories, but you could also use card stock paper or something of 
the sort to keep everything separated. One day I will get different color dividers, but my husband still had these from his old school supplies so instead of throwing them away, I thought I’d used them. Then I labeled everything with washy tape. I use washy take to label most everything, because it’s pretty and it works great! Plus it’s cheaper to buy a role of washy tape, than labels. And you’ll notice that I used zip lock bags, that I already had in my kitchen, for poly envelopes. Poly envelopes are usually not expensive, but I had these there and it also worked great, so why not?
To get the zip locks in the binder, I just stabbed rings through the plastic, because a whole puncher will not work. I found that out the hard way. You can also just snip a little hole with a scissor if you want. I use these to keep receipts stored away. I have one for receipts that need to be written down and one for the receipts I already wrote down. I still keep the months receipts after I’ve written them down just in case, but so far I’ve never needed them, so you probably wouldn’t have to have both.
I have slots for notes, extras, vacations, Christmas and the past trackers I keep just for fun, if I ever wanted to see how much we spent that year or how much we spent the last month. Now, like I said, I keep the monthly trackers in the front so it looks pretty, but then the vacation sheet I keep with the vacation receipts. Once Christmas rolls around, I’ll make one for that too, but for now this is good. 
So that is pretty much it. Every time I buy something I ask for the receipt and when I get home, I put it in the zip lock and when I have time I’ll write it down. And sometimes that’s at the end of the month, but I still have the receipt somewhere where I wont lose it and I still have somewhere to write it down where I won’t get confused. Now, like I said, this works for us now, but I’m sure our needs will change and the planner with change. But as that happens I’ll be sure to keep you updated, incase you might get some inspiration from it.
I also want to add that some people have budget for how much they can spend on every category, so you could do that instead of this. But this works us. So far we don’t spend too much and stay within our budget. I think because we keep track of it, we get scared that we might see a huge number on the sheet later and freak out. So this tells our brain to be careful of what we buy.
I hope this post inspired you in some way; maybe even set up your own budget binder. 😉
Until Next Time,
Maria
