Home and Budget Binder

It's been almost a month since Nate and I packed up our belongings and moved into a cozy little apartment. As I mentioned before, we've signed a lease for 12 months hoping that we can pay off our debts and save up for a down payment on a home by the time our lease is up. As I've been budgeting, crunching the numbers and trying to make our financial plan for this next year, I came across a few pins on Pinterest that tickled my fancy. After a few minutes of work my combination Home and Budget Binder was born! I did lots of research and I'm excited to share my findings with you today. My binder isn't as fancy as the other ones you'll find online, but my goal was to use what I had around the house to make my binder rather than spending more money on supplies.

Without further adieu, I introduce to you my Home and Budget Binder!

What you'll need:
1 Binder
8 Section Dividers
Page Protecters
Printer

The Outside:

The binder I chose to use is already decorated so I didn't need any inserts, but I did come across these adorable monogram binder cover inserts from Jessica Marie Design! I love these and think they add a gorgeous personal touch to any binder. I'm looking for excuses right now to need another binder just so I can use one of these binder cover sets!

The Inside:

I loved The Nina Show's post "Muh Bill Book" for the budget and bills section of my binder. Not only is Nina hilarious, but she also has a great system for organizing things in your budget binder, and she inspired me to form the budget section of my Home and Budget Binder. I suggest referring to her post for more information on what each section is used for!

Sections of my Binder:

1. Calendar - I use this calendar to outline all major financial happenings for each day of each month: paydays, the day rent and other bills are due, etc. It's always nice to have an illustrated outline of the month to see just how long we'll have in between paychecks. I found this Calendar Generator online that shows all major holidays so you'll know if payday or bill due dates are earlier or later than normal because of a holiday.

2. Budget and Ledger - Following the guidelines from Dave Ramsey's Gazelle Budget Lite, I use the Money Gazette Zero Based Budget Template for my monthly budget. Keep in mind that it is designed for Google Docs, but there are plenty of other free templates online if this one isn't your favorite. Once I have solidified my budget for the month, I save one copy titled by the month, year, and then the version of the budget, either the "budget" or the "actuals" (example: September 2014 Budget, July 2014 Actuals, see photo below). I print out the "budget" and put that in my binder. The "actuals" won't be printed out until the end of the month.

Behind the printed out budget is my ledger. It has been helpful to have my budget next to my ledger so I can have my budgeted amounts in mind when I record each payment and deposit on the ledger. I couldn't find the link to the ledger I printed out, but I found a similar version at Thirty Handmade Days. I use this ledger to document all activity that occurs in our checking account throughout the month. As I write down each deposit and withdrawal on the ledger, I enter those amounts into each category on the "actuals" version of my budget. It may be a little bit complicated at first, but you'll get the hang of it! I learned this method in my Family Finance course in college and love the way that I can track whether or not I followed my budget for the month or not, and which categories we struggle with.

At the end of the month when I have categorized and entered in all deposits and withdrawals on my "actuals" sheet, I print it out and compare our budgeted numbers to the amount we actually spent in each category. I highlight in yellow the categories we were under budget in and highlight in red the categories in which we over spent (see image below).

3. Bills to Pay and Bill Checklist - For this section I put in a page protector to hold all incoming bills that need to be paid. About.com has a nifty and colorful Monthly Bill Payment Checklist that I will use to document all of the fixed bills we will have due each month. I think this will be helpful to keep track of the bills that don't send physical mail, so I won't forget to pay any of them. As you can see, I haven't filled out this section yet because we're still waiting to find out when our electricity and gas bills will be due, but as soon as we are billed I will be able to put in the dates on our checklist.

4. Debt Snowball - Here is a link to an excellent explanation of Dave Ramsey's Debt Snowball system and a printable worksheet to fill out. I've used this worksheet before and loved it! I also like that you can type in your debts rather than write them out. I haven't worked all the way through the debt snowball (in fact, we're still working on our emergency fund) but Nate and I are excited to watch our debt shrink!

5. Home - I don't really do any meal planning, we don't have any kids yet, and we're not homeowners so the only thing I could think to put in the "Home" section of my binder is a list of the places we have stored furniture and boxes that we won't need until we actually move into a house. My Storage List Template is adapted from a To Do List Template from Microsoft Word.

6. Health - Val & Words has a great template designed to track your measurements, which will be so helpful for me to be able to track my weight and progress as I try to lose some extra poundage! I plan on filling out each section once a week, so I printed out a couple of pages to coordinate how many weeks it will take for me to get to where I want to be.

7. Church - Because Nate and I just joined our new LDS ward, we haven't been assigned any callings yet. This section will be used whenever we meet with our new bishop and are called to help out in the ward. I think it will also be helpful to keep track of the monthly Visiting Teaching message!

8. Other - I left this section open for the future, in case I end up needing a section for my job, for blogging, or anything else that requires some paperwork.

I have loved using my Home and Budget Binder! It has everything I need to track our finances which is incredibly important, as well as anything else I see as important enough to keep track of. I feel like we're finally starting to take control of our finical situation and it's liberating!

Is there anything I left out that you would put in your binder? I'd love to hear your ideas!