Savvy Budget Planner: Free 13 Pages (2024)

Embarking on a Budget Planner journey is exciting, scary and rewarding all wrapped up in one little package. The ride is curvy, eye opening and sometimes a little bumpy. If you continue to stay on board until the end though, the financial rewards are worth it.

The Savvy Budget Planner takes you through some of the budgeting basics in 13 pages at a fast pace, so put your seat belts on and come along for the ride!

💰 Why This Works

Easy to Follow – We made this “step by step” easy. We want you to be successful and improve your budgeting skills!

Anyone Can Start – Whether you are 21 or 51, there is no reason that you can’t start right now. If you have tried before but didn’t succeed, that’s ok. Get back up and brush off the dirt and try again. Take it one step at a time.

We Show You Where to Start – There is clear direction here on where to start and simple steps to get you on the right path. Plus, we have so many budgeting tools here on Savor + Savvy that you will have everything you need to be successful!

Want to save some time? Fill in your email and I will send this right over to you!

🔍 What is Included

The actionable sheets you will start working on begin on page 7.

Vision Boards

We’ve included Family, Career, Money, Quality of Life, Personal Growth, Heath. If you haven’t used a Vision Board before, we walk you through how to use it. It’s just like setting goals. For Vision Boards, you put words or pictures of what you want your life to look like, so you know what you are working towards.

It is extremely powerful, so please spend the time to fill it out!

Monthly Budget

There are two sheets for you to work on setting up your budget for the month. Don’t worry, we walk you through all of it. Print out several copies so you always have some in reserve.

Daily Spending

This is one of the most important sheets ever! I know that sounds overly dramatic, but it is true. I love how we all are seriously shocked on what we spend daily without even realizing it. This is one of the biggest eye opening sheets we include. In the 52 Week Savings Challenge, I give you a ton of ideas of ways to cut back on your daily spending.

Don’t ask me how much I spent on my fancy coffee drinks in a month. It was scary!

Monthly Expenses

Use this sheet to log in all of your monthly expenses, like your cell phone and power bills. Don’t forget to track those mystery autopay bills – they are easy to forget about. This may seem daunting at first, but you can always look at the 28 Shocking Ways Frugal People Save Money to find hidden jewels of potential savings for your family.

Debt Payoff

Log in all of your debts here and start watching them decrease as you start to pay them off. You can look at using the Snowball Method or the Debt Avalanche Method when deciding which technique works better for you.

5 Step Road Map

This one page gives you the Five Steps to use to start your journey off on the right foot.

30 Day Plan

If you still feel a little “off” and unsure of the next steps, it’s ok. This one page guide provides 30 days of activities to help you do something on each day to reach your goals. Don’t shake your head and think I’m crazy as I have you do the same thing each Friday. There is a reason! This gets you in the habit of tracking your life.

Additional Resources

There are so many things on Savor + Savvy that can help you so I gave you nine great places to land on here to guide you on your way. We have a lot more than that, but I’ll hold back everything so I don’t overwhelm you right away.

📝 Instructions

Let’s be honest! This is a big task, especially if you haven’t tried to budget before. This will not be done in one day. Think of each step as a day in your journey. As mentioned above, this is hard to do and is oftentimes emotional. So, to expect that you can crank these out in an afternoon, might not be achieved by everyone, and that’s ok.

Step One: You’re here! Seriously, that is the first step. The fact you landed on this page says you want to change old habits and make a difference. Congrats! I can’t wait to share with you all the goodies to help make this happen for you.

Step Two: Enter in your email address and I will send it right over to you. That way you will have it right in your email inbox. Print off the sheets. You can put them in a binder or simply staple them together.

Step Three: Read everything over first. It all comes together at the end, but parts of it might be initially confusing. We’ll help you every step of the way.

Step Four: Start with your Vision Boards. Write them out or cut out photos from magazines or websites. Either way, pick things that you want to see your life become. Our family likes to travel, so I tend to put things that reflect travel so I can stay focused on my goals.

Step Five: Fill in the Monthly Budget sheets. You can see where it will start to come together a little bit now. It will take time to pull ALL of your expenses. Don’t forget to look at anything that is charged on a credit card or pulled from your checking automatically. It all goes on that sheet. You may need a few months to make sure any quarterly or annual charges get added.

Step Six: Daily Spending is a sheet that you should work immediately. It is one of the most crucial pieces of the binder, as this will show you where you are spending your hard-earned money. Most people go from “I don’t spend much each day” to “holy crapola!”

The truth is discovered when you write down every single time you spend money. We just don’t want to admit to it. Don’t skip a quick $6 debit swipe or $10 Venmo. Everything goes on here.

Step Seven: Track those monthly expenses. You logged them into the budget above but it’s time to start tracking and investigating what can go and what can be cut back.

For example: in the summer, we increased our Hulu subscription to $12.99/month. We’ve watched everything we wanted, so now we are decreasing our plan to eliminate Disney Plus. When looking at Hulu’s plans, I can do the plan with ads for $5.99 or I can choose the $11.99 option with no ads. Most people opt for $11.99/month because the extra $6 doesn’t seem like that much.

Well, that is the hidden money I am talking about. How many things can you find hidden in your expenses if you dig a little deeper? Plus, you can live with ads. When did we get to the point that we have to pay for every little thing? Think about how many little things you are paying for that add up.

Step Eight: Start logging all those debts so you can see the decrease happen each month. The feeling of seeing those numbers go down are awesome!

Step Nine: Start tracking the 30 Day Plan that is included. This gives you a little baby task to do each day so that over the course of a month, your budget will not even look the same. Most of these are very small yet impactful.

The only thing that should stay in order is to make sure that you are looking over your accounts each week. This keeps your plan at the forefront of your brain and you don’t stray too far from your goals. Over the course of a week, you will be able to see how you are doing. If you had a good week, that is fantastic but that doesn’t mean you can move to checking them every other week. Nope! That means it’s working and you need to stay the course and keep checking the same day every week.

❗ Expert Tips

• If it feels like this is a lot and you are overwhelmed, skip the Vision Boards. It’s best to set some goals, but it is better to do something than nothing.
• If you don’t have full support of your family, work the Daily Spending sheet by yourself and show your family after two weeks the money you “found” by knocking out coffees, lunches and little things that you spent money on. That might be enough to help inch them in the right direction and join you.
• Track your accounts every week. Spending gets out of control so fast and a week is almost too long to go. I like to review them on Fridays or Mondays. On Fridays, I know what we have done and it sets us up to know what we have ahead of us for the weekend. If I review on Mondays, then I have a clear picture of what we did over the weekend. It really depends on how your brain works.

Please fill in your email and I will send this over to you. You’ll be added to our email list and will get periodic updates on money saving items.

Are you all in and ready to take a bigger plunge? Do you see yourself becoming financially free? Our 108 Page Budget Binder takes this planner and leaves nothing out. You are set for everything you need to become a budgeting master planner and I can’t wait to see you on the other side.