DIY budget planner book that’s effective and super easy to make!

This post is all about how to make a budget planner.

If you’re new to managing your money or just feel a little lost, then you need to know how to make a budget planner – one that actually works.

The good news?

It is SUPER EASY and we have free budget printables for you that will be perfect in the DIY budget planner that you’re about to learn how to make.

The one thing I encourage you to keep in mind:

Financial experts say that it takes about 3-4 months to learn to effectively follow a budget. So, don’t get discouraged with yourself too quickly — it will take time, but making yourself a budget planner is the first step to getting there.

This post is all about how to make a budget planner.

This post may contain affiliate links, which means I’ll earn a commission if you purchase through my link, at no extra cost to you. Our full disclosure policy is pretty boring, but you can read it here.

HOW TO MAKE A BUDGET PLANNER:

What You’ll Need:

• A binder (½ inch to 1½ inch)
• Page protector sheets (optional)
• A hole punch
• 12 dividers
• Our free budget planner printable

Step 1: The Binder

So you’ve probably figured out by now that this budget planner book will be in the form of a binder. To be honest, having it in a binder makes it REALLY easy to keep it organized, divide it up by month, and shuffle pages around if needed.

I used to use a notebook for my budget planning but I switched to a binder a while ago and have been obsessed with the binder method ever since.

Here’s what you need to know:

You’ll need your binder to be a ½ inch to 1½ inches. The size you choose depends on:

• Whether you’ll be tracking your spending (literally tracking every purchase) as well as budget planning
• If you are tracking your spending, whether you’ll be doing it in your binder or doing it digitally (like with our editable budget tracker spreadsheet)
• Whether you will be keeping receipts and other tax information in your binder, or whether it will strictly be for budget planning

Obviously, the more paper you have in the binder, the bigger it will need to be. 

So, as a rule of thumb, if you’re only using the binder for monthly budget planning, you can get away with ½ inch or 1 inch. If you’ll be using it for budget tracking and other financial information as well, you’ll probably want to get a slightly thicker binder, like 1½ inch.

Step 2: The Printable Budget Planner

Next, you’ll need to print out our budget planner printables (don’t worry, these budget printables will ACTUALLY help you get rid of your financial stress). 

Just give us your email address below and we’ll send you a printable planner that includes:

• A place to plan your short term & long term financial goals
• Monthly budget planners that outline every category you need and walk you through how to plan your budget so that you don’t lose sight of any expenses
• Blank templates so you can customize your budget to your needs
• Spending tracker sheets so that you know where all your money is going
• Examples of everything so that you don’t get overwhelmed figuring out where to start

AND something else you should know about this is that it can absolutely be printed without colour, so if you want to save money on ink, printing this in black and white will not compromise the quality of any budget planner worksheet! 

In fact, I print mine in black ink every month (yes, I actually use these too).

Step 3: Figure out how you want to organize it

The beauty of this is that you can kind of decide how to make a budget planner in a way that works for you. There are pretty much two options for how to organize your budget planner:

1. Separate each month by putting them into separate page protector sheets.

If you want to avoid having to hole punch your budget planner sheets, then getting page protectors is a great idea because you can just stick all the sheets for each month into one page protector per month. This requires less preparation and keeps your budgets effectively separated by month.

The downsides of this method are that if you’re also printing out the spending tracker sheets, then you might have too many sheets to fit them all in a page protector. On top of that, you’ll constantly be taking sheets out and putting them back in to track new spending. That can just get annoying!

2. Hole punch the pages and divide them with binder dividers

The other option, of course, is to hole punch the pages and divide them by month using binder dividers. This might take a little more prep time, but in the long run it’ll be easier to flip through your budget binder to update it and check the budgets you’ve set.

Step 4: Decorate it, if you want; Otherwise, budget away!

That’s all! This is a super easy 3-step process to making a simple but incredibly efficient budget binder.

If you want, you can go ahead and decorate the cover of your binder; but you definitely don’t have to. Personally, I like the minimalistic & clean look of a plain white or black binder, so I don’t. But if decorating it is going to get you excited about your budgeting, then go for it.

(And send me a pic! I always love hearing from creative people who actually take the time to decorate their binder!)

Are you making your own DIY budget binder? Let me know in the comments!

This post was all about how to make a budget planner.

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