I love journals! They can be a great tool for expressing ourselves, working towards our goals, and to reflect on our present moment. Using a budget journal can be a great tool to feel empowered when working towards your financial goals. There are benefits to having a written budget:
- Taking time to write down a budget can help you to be more intentional to make your plan your own. When using an app or spreadsheet it could be less personalized to your life and needs.
- Writing increases our brain’s neural activity, which can increase our connection to our budget (Olson, 2016).
- Writing has a therapeutic affect and can be calming (Olson, 2016). This can allow us to have a positive connection with our budget and financial plan.
- It is easy to look through our written budget and to see progress towards goals (The Panther Group, 2019)!
Features in a Budget Journal
There are certain features that I look for in a budget journal and try to incorporate these when I am making a journal for myself or to sell. These are some of those features:
- A Monthly Overview Page: to have a view of all the income and expenses for the month.
- A Savings and Debt Tracker: this is helpful to be able to see progress towards goals of saving or paying off debts. This can be empowering to keep working towards your goals!
- Spending Tracker: a tracker can help you be more intentional of how to spend your money, to see how your spending actually fits into your budget, and to see patterns in your spending.
- Space to Write Goals: writing down our goals is a huge step towards completing them! Writing it down and planning action steps gives you the freedom to work towards your goals with confidence!
An additional feature that I recently put in a new printable budget journal that I made is a Bill Organizer. I was excited to make this because often we have to pay bills to a lot of different companies and may have additional subscriptions and services that are billed monthly. This form can be a great way to organize these payments! Below is a free download from my printable budget journal! Check out this free bill organizer worksheet! You can check out the full budget journal at the link below and the download for the freebie is below that! Would love to know what features you look for in a budget journal or what tools you use for your budget!
References
The Panther Group (2016). The Very Real Benefits of Writing Down a Budget. The Very Real Benefits of Writing Down a Budget (thepanthergrp.com)
Olson, N. (2016). Three Ways That Handwriting With A Pen Positively Affects Your Brain. Three Ways That Handwriting With A Pen Positively Affects Your Brain (forbes.com)
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