It’s the most wonderful time of the year! I love a fresh start, and budget planning is no exception. I’m sharing my 2019 set-up for how I manage all of our family finances in my Erin Condren Monthly Deluxe Planner.

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VIDEOS MENTIONED
2018 Budget Planner Set-Up

Sinking Funds
Part 1:
Part 2:

Our Cash Envelope System

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Thank you for watching!
hey everybody its Jen from Jen plans and I am setting up my new 2019 Erin Condren deluxe monthly planner to manage all of our family finances for 2019 I have my old one up here this is the 2018 the one that I'm currently in and I have two separate videos if you want a more thorough look at this planner and its features without all the budget stuff I've linked to that video below as well I don't want to spend a lot of time today walking through the features of this one I have a separate video for that if you want to watch it and then I also have the setup for that old one linked as well so this is everything I'm using today I have the deluxe monthly planner of course you can use any stick you know it's linked to these these are just cute sticky notes also from Erin Condren and then I have a little bit of washi tape I have some stickers and these are really these are the specific ones that you know these are more decorative and functional these I use for the sinking funds chart which I'll get into in just a minute so I'll link this one as well these are the transparent dots by christian designs and i customized the like you can order it and I think she has like like five colors maybe on the standard sheets but you can select a custom option and I just asked for a different color in every row so that's one way that you can customize it and then this is just personal preference but in the beginning of the year at a glance I don't you know I'm using it January through December so I don't need this part so I cover it up so I just took this is sticker paper that I cut to size before I started filming just to make it easy and you know I mean if you don't have sticker paper don't go up you don't have to go on by sticker paper if you want to do this just take regular paper and you can use a glue stick or tape or whatever and just cover the part that you don't need so those are those are kind of the main players and I'm just gonna walk through my setup I I use I use this planner to manage more than just our budget I kind of set out you know before I setup a planner for the year I don't just sit down and start throwing stuff in because I feel like then later I change my mind or I forgot to include something so I like to plan out everything that I want to put in the planner first and then kind of rearrange it a little and then put it in so I'm gonna walk you through first kind of how I'm gonna lay it out and then I'll know if you're gonna do it I'll probably speed it up so you don't have to watch a real time but this is the like I said this is the Erin Condren deluxe monthly planner I got all of that you have an option to add extra note pages I added all the extra notes pages and yes this is the same thick mohawk paper that is used in the life planners as well which I love it's nice and thick I'm just really nice paper so I I laid out this is kind of for the back notes section this is this is why I think most testing out some of the Washington this is why I love this planner because I need more than just a calendar and you know this is more than just keeping track of bills I also use this for goals and for you know tracking retirement stuff and income and tracking you know there's planning and tracking and so if you if you need a space to plan and track this is a great option at least it's what works best for me so yeah at the beginning of the planner the first section is the year at a glance and so this will be my kind of sinking funds overview I've also linked below I linked a lot of videos below I linked my sinking funds video that kind of types you of them videos that kind of explain the concept of sinking funds but basically for your expenses that don't occur monthly or don't necessarily occur monthly I plan ahead for those and I save a little bit every month in each of these categories so I'll show you my categories you can watch the other video if you want kind of a deeper dive into that but for example like we only pay our HOA quarterly so every month you know I take the quarterly payment I divided by three I know just I like marking and I say that every month and I like seeing when it's due just for cash purposes so I'll I'll show you when we lay that out this section I'm going to use for monthly events and costs and I'll incorporate it into the monthly sections as well but I like seeing it all in one place and so this section is for things that are not usually these are like one-time things that are coming up during the year so you know this is 2019 I know that in October I have a cousin getting married and I know that in August I have a friend getting married and of course that's gonna be travel and that's gonna be gift and that's gonna be stuff that's kind of a little bit outside of you know we have those categories but I want to know when they're coming up so I can make sure that I'm properly planning for them if you have stuff that you know is coming up it's a really good idea to just you know look where it is go backwards and see what you need to do so that you're prepared I don't want to be I've known about these weddings for awhile I don't want to be bamboozled you know cost wise when it comes to time you know when it comes time to you know spend the money on making sure that we can be there and that kind of stuff so so this is you know kind of one-time date specific things that will happen during this year and then because this monthly deluxe has additional pages now some people people had mixed feelings about the changes to this particular layout because the old one had one page here then the monthly then two pages and that was it but this one has an extra set of pages so I'm really excited so you went from three to five that's two whole extra pages a whole extra spread which to some people might not seem like much but I'm really excited about it and then they also took a lot of the structure away which for me I like making it work I like a little bit more flexibility so I was excited about that change so I'm gonna show you how I'm gonna set it up so my this first page I used to use this one before the month as a sinking funds kind of overview so I would put my sinking funds here and then I would put starting what I added that month what I took out that month and then ending and then I would carry that ending over to the next page and like I said it's all explained in my other videos if you would like to have more detail about how that works but I'm now gonna be using this page you know the first page of the month as a monthly overview so I'll have goals I'll have things that are due this month from that sinking funds page and also stuff from this page you know I like having kind of an overview here and then breaking it down by month so it'll be you know January goals for January and these are gonna be different every month like our you know as of right now our goal for January is gonna be you know we're really trying to hit to catch up with some retirement savings that we held off on while we finished paying off you know our last student loans so that's gonna be a big goal for us in January and you know keep in mind that financial goals don't always have to be a dollar amount like one of the other things we really want to work on this year is optimizing a lot of our expenses and car insurance you know for example is one of them our six month premium is due in January and so we have the money saved up but I'm trying to find ways to lower that cost for our family so that's another goal is you know working on car insurance cost so I like putting these things in here because I don't there's you can't for me anyway you know save money that's not for me a goal that makes a lot of sense I need like put this much money into here lower you know this sorry lower this expense by you know whatever so this is this page is gonna be the monthly overview goals things that are due this month and then I'll probably keep space open because sometimes halfway through the month I need to make changes like something you know we had a month last year where or this past year where something really big came up we had to pull from the emergency fund we had to halt a couple things and I like writing all that down so I can look back at the end of the year and see you know oh yeah that thing happened this month but you know this is what we did you know in the big picture so this is gonna become a monthly overview which I did not have in last year's planner I just didn't have enough space and I'm and I found myself using notes pages as kind of like a monthly like scratch page and I'm just I'm so excited to have that so I'm gonna use this page for a monthly overview this is just a quote page but don't be afraid to write on it you can put sticky notes on it you can just you know in my life planner I just write directly on it things that are specific to that month you can put quotes it doesn't even have to be functional you can decorate it with stickers if you want I'm not a highly decorative person but if you are that could be something you know that you could do the monthly I'm not gonna do a ton for the monthly set up right now because it really varies from month to month actually doesn't really vary a whole time from month to month but I use this to track monthly bills cash withdrawals from the ATM and then I use the sidebar to track our income because we are both self-employed and we have some like you know there we have like W to pay and then we have contractor pay and there's like you know bunch of stuff coming in so I keep track of it here it just makes it less complicated for me of course that wouldn't apply to you if you're not in that same situation so you know you could use this for a variety of things but that's what I like to use it for and then I map out when I pay all my bills so I if I know that you know all my you know half of my bills are doing the first and I pay them you know let's say a week before they're due to make sure everything clears in time I need to know that a bunch of money is coming out of my account you know around this time that's helpful for me planning out cash flow like when can I transfer money into sinking funds I can't do it in the beginning of the month because I need that money to pay for you know whatever it these bills so I use little stickers and I put you know mortgage cable and internet and so on and so forth so that's what I use the monthly layout for and then we have these four pages but this page of this page of this page in this page are all January and then this one turns over into February which will be another monthly overview but this one will be for the month of February so now these last four pages after the monthly layout I used to have on this page the sinking funds overview for the month so the annual is just gonna be dots for when things are due but this is going to be like all of my sinking fund categories exactly how much money I have in the account dedicated to those categories so it's not just on this list because these are just things that are date specific garbage is due every three months our past control is due annually or h:o as do quarterly our car insurance is due every six months these are things that have due dates and I know when they will occur but a lot of my sinking funds don't like you know home maintenance I don't know when our you know garbage disposals gonna go and I don't know what if our water heater is gonna die and all that other stuff or if our car is gonna break down so I also keep our full list of sinking funds with the amounts that we have dedicated to each fund on this page as kind of an overview which is what I had before it was just like I said on that page this page I'm gonna kind of recreate if you remember from the one last year if you are familiar with the one from last year there was a sidebar here with checkboxes they would like check circles I think and so I used that for monthly bills and then on this side at the top I did other monthly expenses like you know the cash that we take out for food and for entertainment and I would also keep track of how much gas like for the cars I don't take gas money out I just keep it in my account but I help for it in the beginning of the month so I have to make sure that's in there somewhere so it's not really a bill it's not a sinking fund but it's just a monthly you know it's still a cost so I have you know cash withdrawals here and other miscellaneous monthly expenses and then what I used to use this kind of middle section for because the monthly bills will go here which I will still section off I used to use this as a sinking funds tracker and so I would look in my account and see you know I went to the mechanic and I spent you know $200 on my car that needs to go somewhere so that at the end of the month I can go back to my sinking fund summary and note oh yeah I had $800 in my car repair fund I used 200 and now I only have 600 I like keeping track of all that is it a little bit of extra work yes every single time somebody watches this that's unfamiliar not every single time I need a 9% of it was my anecdotal observation not scientific but almost all the time somebody says there's not a lot of work and I always think yes but I mean it's not a lot of work especially once you ease to it but it is so much better than not the money are being disorganized and not you know having to worry about where the money's gonna come from I don't I don't worry for my car breaks down I know how much I have I know what it's gonna be I transfer it over and I write it down it's not a big deal and it takes all of 10 seconds and I just promise you that it's so I mean I don't want to try to have to convince everybody cuz everybody's doing their own thing but for me and for my family I sleep so much better at night putting the extra work in here instead of figuring out how to fix something that I wasn't prepared for when it's not that hard to be prepared for it so this is monthly bills and other expenses so other expenses up here monthly bills will be on this make a sidebar and then down here I'm just gonna I don't really know how I'm gonna fill in the space that I had for the sinking funds list because it was never enough I always had to put extra paper here a paper clip it in or put a sheet to log sinking funds tracking and so I would always write which is what I'll do on these two pages I'm gonna need a full two pages it'll be date category amount which is really similar to the budget planner if you have the Erin Condren budget planner it's a petite planner it's like about this big it fits in the folio I shoulda brought one over to show you but it's a great tool it's not as robust in terms of notes pages which is why I don't use it for budget planning because I use I have all this other stuff that I like to keep track of but it has an awesome sinking funds tracker and so what actually well I probably won't do this because I like having the extra room to spread out but I thought about cutting those pages out and in like using adhesive to put them in here but I like all that room but it's basically going to be modeled after those pages it will be date category and then the amount so I know like you know November 12 car maintenance $200 or you know another one of my sinking funds is clothing for my kids you know I spend on you know November 20th you know 50 bucks on kids clothing for matching family picture you know which I almost never do is the first year bought about like coordinating stuff so that would come out of here but I knew that I had the money so I didn't you know it's you feel a lot of freedom when you know that it's already set aside so this is the this is the spread that I will use to track all of those monthly little expenses that come out of sinking funds but I need to have them somewhere so this is where that will happen and I'm so excited because this one little section that I was using before just was not cutting it I need a full two-page spread so that's how I'm using all five of the pages monthly overview sinking funds summary monthly bills that I'll check off when I pay them and then I make sure you know that they're all accounted for here and then sinking funds tracking so that's gonna be repeated for every month throughout the rest of the year February and mine is a 12 month it just goes you know that the annual the calendar year then I let's see I don't think I use this a lot because they don't usually have a whole bunch of things that I know this far in advance but if I did actually that's not true because we have a couple weddings and I knew about but this is where I keep track of extra things that are coming up the following year and I just write them as a month that they're happening or if I know like somebody got engaged but I don't know when the wedding's gonna be it might be this year so I would put that in that section and then in the back it's just all the notes pages and so I like using I like using the notes pages for a variety of things that are all laid out here it's a combination of tracking like specific category tracking for example giving I keep track of how much we give in to where so that at the end of the year number one I can see and number two you know we use that to help with our taxes for our tax deductions so if this is more of a tracking category goals is obviously not I mean that's not really tracking and that's just you know I'm kind of using it as a work page that I will change throughout the year but we'll start with some goals and I'll be able to go back and how we're doing 2019 income our income varies every month and so I have a whole page that at the end of every month they track what our monthly income was so this is another tracking page inspiration I have in my other planner is just a whole bunch of quotes this is what it looks like this is my inspiration spray they're just a whole bunch of quotes that I looked up that I love that kind of help keep me on track and keep me motivated and so you know that's neither here nor there but that's not something you can put in you know an app and it's a little more than being able to put it in the in the more like basically a budget tracker so that's another reason I like having this so that's inspiration and then account information policy information for life and disability insurance things like that that I need to be able to reference do you need to rewrite this every year because some people are probably thinking well that's foolish to rewrite it every year it's just what I like doing of course you don't have to or you can photocopy and tape it I mean you don't have to rewrite it I obviously like writing things it helps me and it helps me just spend the time focusing on Finance stuff and I just enjoy doing it so so I rewrite it every year plus we've made some changes to some of our policies and so I like having it updated every year so that I can look back and see exactly what we had at any given time so I like having it all in one place so this is the first thing I do like I said in the beginning is I get everything out that I want to focus on in this back section and so what I didn't do yet but I want to do now is kind of organize them into like which order they will be in so I think what I'm gonna do is it'll be baby steps in the front I like having inspiration in the front this is all more like this is just informational and not really tracking home maintenance retirement giving kids college are all tracking in common goals are trekking but there they're different than specific you know than these categories in my mind and car mania s go here too the reason I keep track of car maintenance and home maintenance which seem like I guess you know why track those specific categories and not every category I just like looking back and seeing what we paid for each of these things so I total this up every year it's kind of arbitrary just know it's just what I like to track so so these are kind of sorry then I kind of put everything into these groups so this is what I want in the beginning this is still kind of you know planning and tracking but it's separate from the more specific categories and then this is just information I think what I'm gonna do is he'll do this first then I'll have the 2019 specific like big picture goals and income that's a big picture then I think I'm gonna have tracking so I don't have to dig all the way to the back to do that and then I'll do more specific tracking toward the back do baby steps here if you're just getting started with budgeting I love in my opinion Dave Ramsey is the best place to start if you don't know where to start once you're through like if you're debt-free and you have all you know you have your emergency fund and you're ready to invest there are a lot of other places that I like looking and going but if you're kind of in the trenches this is a great place to start so I keep it here this is where we started and I still like having it here and looking inspiration is gonna be more than one page so for that I want to do goals next and then right after goals we'll do in common my husband and I do goals together for the year so we'll sit down probably in the next couple of weeks and review everything in 2018 and see kind of you know what we set out to do what we did and then we'll create our goals for for 2019 and then of course tracking income this well this kind of goals with goals but I like keeping track here of things that we're doing not you know of course a list but also ideas and ways that we you know I'm constantly looking at ways to optimize their budget in ways that work best for our family and so I like you know is another thing that is really hard to do if you have like mint or every dollar or you need a budget which are all fantastic apps for tracking numbers you you know you can't really this is the kind of stuff that it's hard to plan I just like having everything all in one place so that's optimizing and then general account information will go here and I'll put our policy policy stuff here for life and disability insurance and then we'll start with categories so let's see do I'm gonna put these in kind of like do giving first then retirement comes next and kids college comes next if you're wondering because I'm putting this in order of our priority why we save for like we have three kids why would we save for retirement first because you put on your own mask before you help other people with theirs I don't want to be a burden to our kids I want to make sure that we are being aggressive with retirement savings and then we will help our kids with college that's a choice that we make it's not choice that everybody else makes we're going you know we're gonna do the best we can to help them if they decide to go to college then Romanians in and then the back will be kind of flex I have a lot of extra pages here I added the maximum amount because I'm just always thinking of things that I want to include in here and so I like the flexibility and then if I don't use it you know that's fine then I just don't use it so that's how everything will be set up in the budget planner I will I'm gonna start going through and putting in all of the stuff that I planned out so I hope you'll stick around if you want to watch so we're back to the beginning thank you if you stuck around and watched all of that I am going to just flip through now and show you everything that I prepped I only did I only did a full January I usually go through and I might put some stickers and washi tape down just to prep but but I only prepped for January for right now so I'm gonna walk you through what I did and I hope you like it so this is the sinking funds overview I entered in entered in I wrote down everything that we pay not monthly but set on a date and then I color-coordinated this is about the only thing in planning I ever color coordinate just because it's easy to see like oh shoot what is our HOA do oh it's March June September and December and I love doing this because if you look at some months like March is a lot of stuff – June a lot of stuff do you know I don't want to have to scramble to come up with all of these things at once if I'm not preparing so that's all set the whole year overview my mom has her last she's getting ready to retire and so we're gonna drive out of state to see the last concert that she's conducting so that's an April that's a big thing we'll have to plan for and then a couple of weddings in the fall late summer fall so that's there and then I'll just add to this as events keep popping up if you watched the time-lapse you may have noticed that I moved some stuff around sometimes when I'm planning I don't I feel like I didn't you know I didn't like the way that it was and so I changed it so I'm gonna do bowls up top things that are due this month and then I'm leaving this whole section down here for notes I was gonna put it up here but then I didn't want to be I don't know I feel weird like goals I'll do ahead of time do this month I'll do ahead of time but notes I might add throughout month and I don't want to be doing it in the middle so I moved this up to coordinate and then of course monthly bills there's really not much to prep there until we get closer to January and then I lay all the bills out and then this is my sinking funds overview so I have not filled in all the categories because although they usually don't change sometimes they change this is why I don't do this for the whole year and I change it month to month for example we got a dog a couple months ago so now I have a new category which is pet or dog or you know whatever you want to call it and so I add that to this list so it'll be the name of the category like Amazon Prime I have you know 80 dollars in the fund right now every month I add ten dollars and I'm not gonna take anything out of this particular category until it's due in its Amazon Prime to March and I end the month with $90 and then I'll carry that number over to the next month starting so this is like my overview of sinking funds this page I split like I said I'm gonna do a monthly bills on this side and I'll just do little checkboxes all the way down mortgage electric gas cable etc and then monthly expenses that are not bills like I'm not gonna write a check for the groceries but I do need to plan on that as part of the budget some groceries dining out fun money gas and entertainment go here and then I haven't figured out what I'm gonna do here yet so I'm gonna leave it open and then this is gonna be tracking out going sinking funds but just all the way through this date category amount and so what I usually write is like 11:15 old Navy and then in parentheses I write kids clothes and then $50 and then at the end of the month I look back and see okay how much should I spend on kids clothes and let's say there are like two places that I spent money I highlight that one highlight that one add them together and then fill in the total amount under you know I think kids clothes usually somewhere here I started with 150 dollars then I added you know another fifty dollars and I spent fifty dollars so now I ended up with and then the very last page oops that is the last page and then the next page is February so I didn't go through and do every month for Feb for every month for this setup but I did do just the the monthly overview and then if you switch all the way to back I added the d-branes baby steps these are all Erin Condren stickers I'll link everything in the description I haven't done inspiration yet that takes a while so I want to sit down and really spend a lot of I don't know I like to get my markers out and make it look pretty so I'll do that later 2019 goals he's all done 2018 income I have a month and then I have monthly income and then I like to do year-to-date things to optimize and I left my sticky notes I remember what was on that list I've count general account information life and disability insurance information giving retirement which we have a combination of 401ks and IRAs kids college home maintenance like water heater blue we spent this much money that kind of stuff will go here so I can see at the end of the year what we you know I mean it's helpful also to know just what progress we did throughout the earth did it that's it so that's my whole overview and my setup thank you so much if you stuck around the whole time I hope this you know gave you some ideas maybe if you were looking for new ideas and I appreciate you all joining me if you guys have questions leave them in the comments I'll do my best to answer them and like I said I have videos for the overview of this planner and sinking funds and my previous year's budget planners in the description as well and I've also linked to all the products that I used in this video in case you would like to pick them up for yourself so thank you so much for watching and I hope you guys have a day by