Erin Condren A5 Budget Planner Walkthrough | Petite Budget Book | 2021 Finance Goals

hi guys welcome back to my channel today i am going to be talking to you about the petite planner budget book and also the new a5 uh budget book that erin condren came out with just a little while ago um i got this i think during the black friday sale i bought all of the a5 books that they had in stock uh during that sale and a lot of them are petite planners already and so i was really interested to see the changes and additions that they would make putting it into an a5 coil notebook because obviously there's more pages in the a5 coil than in the petite planner now i have been trying to figure out what i'm going to use for budgeting for 2021 for a little while now i originally thought that i would keep everything in my life planner but that did not work then i thought that i might use the budget book the petite planner but i don't think there's enough space for what i need and then i thought that i might use a monthly planner but the problem with the monthly planner is that there is no budget structure for that and i need a little bit of structure for budgeting and i knew that i did not want to take the time to set up all kinds of different layouts for each month which is one of the reasons that i do not do bullet journaling even though i love the bullet journaling method i do not have the time to make all of those layouts each month so i need just a little bit of structure to work with so i am going to go through the a5 budget journal and then i will quickly flip through the petite budget planner as well i did go through that already with my petite planner collection that i reviewed um a couple of months ago when it first came out for all of the new dated daily planners etc so let's get started this is the a5 budget book it did not have cover options when i first purchased it there may be new options now it is a removable cover so i'm assuming that they plan to have other a5 covers for these different journals it does have a rose gold coil this was an automatic thing there was no option to change the color of the coil but i love all the rose gold stuff anyways so it was perfect for me when you open it up it says budget book every little bit adds up and you just write your name and then you move into how to use this budget book it has big picture check-ins monthly budget tracking a tracker section and then you're going to move right into the big picture and this says how i currently feel about my finances how i want to feel about my finances main goal for this budget book other ways i want to use this budget book and then three spaces for a big picture finance goal after the big picture you move into i guess a dashboard for the month this is an undated planner so you can use it starting any month of the year um over here it has important days this month something like birthdays or if you have car insurance or you have to register your car or taxes or whatever important thing finance related can go over here and then i'm assuming that you can pretty much do whatever you want here but maybe like a focus for the top three circles up here and then it has future purchases future bills and savings goals i think this is just so that you sort of keep in mind your finance goals for the year um i'm not sure if i would use like the future bills i'm not really sure if i would use that space i'm not i don't know i have always used an excel spreadsheet so this is just a little bit different for me and these are laminated tabs so i don't know if you could use a sharpie pen to write on them or if you would need to like use a label maker and make a sticker but i'm sure or you could probably use stickers from erin condren i think they have month tab stickers that they sell so up at the top you put whatever month it is at a glance and then there's a space for income and then they have categories which i do really like this housing transportation utilities health to just blank spaces and then over here savings food entertainment and two more blank spaces and then space for debt down here if you're working on a debt snowball if you use the dave ramsey method you could put your projected snowball amount here and where you want it to go and then it has totals for all of the different categories down at the bottom the thing that i really like about this a5 planner is this spending summary spending is something that i really want to concentrate on in 2021 we i've said this in so many videos we moved at the beginning of 2020 and so we have had a lot of little purchases that have added up quickly over the entire year and so i want to get a better handle on what we're purchasing and so writing out all of the purchases in a month i think is something that will be helpful it is something that i did years ago right after matt and i went through financial peace university because we were trying to get our entire financial ship in order and so um i wanted to have a good handle on that obviously because we were paying down a lot of debt so this is something that i have been thinking about doing and it's just something that i need to do i know that i need to rein in spending on you know groceries and food that is something that i'm hoping to work on this year and then all of the little amazon purchases there are things that we need but it's very easy to just press that buy now button even if they are things that we need maybe we don't need them right at this moment so um you know thinking through some of those purchases and keeping track of all of the spending is definitely going to be helpful and there are a couple of pages of the spending summary so i'm hoping that with all of this space i can be very detailed about the spending and the purchases you know really separate out into categories what we are buying and then you move into the next month and it starts the same way important days this month and the date and then your little dashboard future purchases future bills and savings goals and then you move into your budget for the month and finally the spending summary and so each month is the same each month is a different color and i actually like these colors quite a bit um they are fun i like all the greens and blues they're my favorite colors then you're going to come after the first six months of the year you will come to the six-month check-in and then you're going to answer the same questions that you did at the beginning of the year how i currently feel about my finances how i want to feel about my finances progress i've made the last six months any pivots or adjustments to make for the next six months and then big picture finance goals three of them again so you can either update your goals or change them completely or work on the same ones then you will continue just going through the rest of the year each month like i said has a different color but it is the same layout it starts with the important days then this dashboard the budget and then the spending summary and so that's how we go through all of the months until we get to the end of the year and so this is the 12-month check-in how i currently feel about my finances how i want to feel about my finances progress i've made in the last 12 months progress i've made with my savings goals progress i've made with paying down debts things that worked to keep my financial goals on track things that work to keep my spending goals on track moving forward i want to and then any pivots or adjustments to make for the next 12 months and then we move into the trackers so there is a savings tracker there are six pages of the savings tracker and then debt trackers there's there's space for six debts and a tracker for each of those debts and then a wish list tracker um category i'm not sure there are six pages of wish list trackers i can't say that and there's a place for a category date item where you want to purchase it from the price and whether or not you buy it you can check it off this is great if there are things like my kids are constantly needing new clothes and different sizes and snow boots and all kinds of outside gear and so to have like a kids category and like a home category um you know home maintenance things that kind of stuff um maybe they don't qualify as wish list items but they do in my book so um so you have the six wish list tracker pages and then you're going to come to a special occasion budget tracker i probably would not use these specific trackers but it is good like if you have a wedding or any events that you are planning on going to there is space for you to list that out and then save for that special occasion and then you have some dot grid pages in the back and uh some coiled in stickers which these look exactly like the petite planner stickers i think they're the same size they may be a little bit bigger but and that is the end of the a5 planner now this is the petite budget book and i believe this is from the focus collection um maybe it's not maybe it is the erin condren collection but um so it opens up and same this book belongs to and then a savings tracker and this is done by month you can write the month what you're saving for how much you deposited total saved so there's two spaces each month for something you're saving for and then you move into the main part of the budget book which is the dashboard which was the same in the a5 then one page for budgeting so there's a little bit less space for what you what you may need to budget the a5 has the two page spread for budgeting which i think is probably a little bit better especially if you have a family and a home that you're caring for if you're in college you know something like this would be a lot easier if you're single you probably don't have as many expenses as if you have um kids and homeschool and home maintenance etc so you have the dashboard the budget page and then spending summary and this is also undated so you have two pages of this of the spending summary and i think you had four in the a5 and then you move into the next month's dashboard and budget page and then spending summary and so that's how it goes i think um so that's how it goes right through the whole planner there isn't like a six-month check-in in this planner and it's obviously much fewer pages i would say half of the pages i'm not entirely sure how many the a5 planner has or how many this planner has but it goes through right to the end of the year it's still 12 months so you get to the end of the planner for the 12-month spreads and then you move into a debt tracker and debt starting balance minimum payment date amount paid and balance after you've made the payment so it has two spreads for the debt tracker and then it has the stickers in the little pocket at the back so there are a lot fewer layouts there isn't the wish list there isn't as much for the spending tracker it does have that savings tracker at the beginning but it's not very big so if you have more savings goals that may not work for you and it also doesn't have the special occasion tracker which like i said i don't think i would be using um but overall i think both of these planners would work well for budgeting but i think that i am going to try this a5 budget journal notebook for this year for 2021 and see where it takes me it may not work long term but it is something that i am going to start this month january and see how it goes so thank you guys so much for watching and i will see you in the next video bye guys

Channel: Townsend House

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Length: 15min 30sec (930 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 04 2021