I love the Bullet Journal. I have always created one when I needed to visualize a financial issue I was having. For instance, how to pay down my credit cards, pay off my car loan, pay off student loans, or set up savings goals. It has been an invaluable tool outside of my normal budgeting practice. It’s a great tool for starting and building an emergency fund or sinking funds.
Implementing a savings tracker helps to motivate you to grow your savings account. A bullet journal budget tracker should be interactive while reflecting your financial goals. I have used it my entire life as an expense tracker to stay on budget, plan vacations, and pay down unexpected expenses. There are many amazing finance tracker ideas for a bullet budget journal.
Here are several bullet journal ideas I’ve discovered and have used in the past. Your bank account will thank me once you have integrated this practice into your daily, weekly, or monthly budgeting. A bullet budget journal is more than just a to-do list. It is the best way to lay out personal finances in a way that focuses your thoughts. A bullet budget can determine whether a goal is a great idea to proceed with or consider an alternative way to achieve your financial goals. However, you first must have done the work by creating a budget. Let’s dive in.
Budgeting
Budgeting is the first step to financial freedom. Read What Is The Purpose Of A Budget to learn how a budget is more than just adding and subtracting. It helps determine where your money is being spent, your spending habits, and how to get control of your money. Your budget should be more than a bill tracker. It is a communication tool for you and your family.
Budgets help you coordinate your funds to pay bills and save. It is a tool to plan your spending for each month. Budgets help you control your spending and eliminate credit card debt and loans. This will lead to an improved financial situation. The final purpose of a budget is to use it to evaluate how well you can manage your money.
A Simple Budget
A simple budget adds up your income and subtracts your expenses on a weekly, monthly, or yearly basis. I start by creating a monthly budget. I then use bullet journaling to track income against bills each month. This bullet journal will help me make a month-over-month cash flow. At any given time, I can see how much money I have available each month or for the next months to determine if I can meet all my financial obligations for the entire year. This was a great way for my family and me to know at the end of the month if we were doing well or not.
If new to budgeting, start with a paycheck-to-paycheck budget. This type of budget allows you to allocate funds by a specific due date. It will also help you better manage your cash flow from paycheck to paycheck, so you do not find yourself short on cash. Click to learn How To Budget When Living Paycheck to Paycheck. This is a simplified way to start on your bullet budgeting journal.
What is a Bullet Budget Journal?
A bullet budget journal is a combination of a bullet journal and a budget. A bullet journal helps you organize your thoughts, tasks, and information to achieve a goal. A budget is a process of creating a financial plan for spending and saving money. When a budget and a bullet journal are combined, they become a powerful tool to visualize your goals. Hence, it is a money journal similar to other types of journals. You use them to write down your goals, thoughts, and feelings. Except you’re journaling your financial goals and aspirations.
For instance, when I wanted to pay off my car note, I wrote down how much I owed. How much was available in my savings account that would not harm my six-month emergency fund? Then I mapped out how long it would take me to pay myself back. I then looked at how much interest I would lose from my high-yield savings account. I determined that to be debt-free, it would be worth forgoing the interest for eight months.
Being debt-free was more important to me at this time in my life. Therefore, I proceeded with paying off the car. and have been debt-free ever since 2018. It took creating a bullet journal page called Paying Off The Car note for me to see this possibility. This was one of the things I wanted to achieve while following Dave Ramsey. This was part of his Baby Step program. I did not follow it exactly. However, the Seven Baby Steps process was a game changer for getting out of debt and saving for an emergency fund.
You can follow it to the letter or make adjustments to suit your personal financial goals. That worked best for me. Your personal preferences may be different.
Types of Bullet Budget Journals.
Using a bullet budget journal to pay off a car loan is one example; you can use a Bullet Budget Journal for various financial goals. Hence, there are other ways to utilize a bullet budget journal to reach your financial goal. To be able to tell your story in a way that helps you see the end game is what journaling is all about.
You can use your journal as a habit tracker, budget tracker, or expense tracker. Your bullet budget journal can be for big goals, such as saving for a down payment for a house. It can be used for planning to pay off your home. Or, like me, it can be used to pay off your car loan or student loans. You can use it to see how you can free up some extra money in your budget. Let’s dive into the different ways you can use Bullet Budget Journal.
Bullet Budget Tracker
A bullet budget tracker is designed to help you track income, expenses, and spending. Bullet journal budget tracking requires a great amount of time and attention to detail. You must track your budget by category, ie, rent, groceries, and entertainment against actual spending. This is very similar to a Budget Vs Actual Variance Analysis Report used to compare budgeted numbers against the amount spent.
This is the most effective way to determine how your finances compare with your budget. This report is best reviewed at the end of the year. However, it can be reviewed monthly if you need to have a tighter rein on your current spending habits. A monthly budget tracker is an excellent tool to avoid wasteful spending.
Spending Tracker
If you ever wondered where all your money goes after paying your bills, you might want to track your daily spending. The discretionary income left over after the bills are paid can quickly disappear if you are not paying attention to how you spend your money. This is a good time to have a brain dump where you log the details of each purchase. This will include the item, the amount, the date, and the cost. You can even add a category like entertainment, clothing, etc.
Whatever you decide, you need to find out where all your money goes at the end of the day. Hence, a spending tracker can act as a Habit Tracker. Where do you habitually spend your money, and can you change these spending habits to save more money?
Savings Tracker
A savings tracker will help you save more money every month. The savings tracker is designed to help you stay on target to achieve your savings goal. Each payday, you should earmark a set amount to go into your savings account and investment accounts. This can be pre-tax or after-tax. It does not matter as long as you are saving on a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly basis. You can set up multiple savings trackers using a picture of a container or thermometer to track your progress. You can also use a chart and tick off every milestone you reach.
These goals could include an emergency fund, various sinking funds for vacation, a down payment for a house, or a new computer. Whether you are starting with increments of $50, $100, $200, or $500, the point is to save. Therefore, you should use all available tools to finish the race. It will be easy to tick off your accomplishments if you set up all deposits into your various savings accounts using direct deposit. This is the easiest way to ensure you will hit your goals. However, before setting up any aggressive savings plans, it would be a good idea to address any debts.
Debt Payoff Tracker
Once your spending is under control and before you begin aggressively saving, it is a good time to review your debt-to-income ratio, or DTI. A good debt-to-income ratio is considered to be 36% or less of your gross monthly income. That means if you make $3,333 per month, your monthly debt should not exceed $1,200. If your total monthly debt payments are $1,200 and your gross monthly income is $3,333, your DTI ratio would be 36% (($1,200 / $3,333) * 100 = 36%). Your DTI is important because lenders use it for mortgage, credit card, and loan approvals. DTIs are also used to determine your interest rates and as an indicator of your financial health.
DTI Ranges
36% or lower is considered good
37% to $49% is considered cause for concern, but you could still get credit approval
50% or more is considered too high and indicates difficulty in managing debt
Therefore, your goal should be to lower your debt if you fall in the 37% or higher range. The way to do that is to track your debt reduction plan. You can either use the snowball method or the avalanche method. The debt snowball method is a debt repayment strategy where you pay off your debts from smallest to largest balance. The avalanche method prioritizes debts with the highest interest rates first, regardless of the balance.
Whatever method you decide, map out how you plan to pay your debt off and within what time frame. Check off each goal when you pay off one or more credit cards or loans. Paying off all your debt is a big goal, and you should celebrate this milestone. Tracking your progress at the end of each month will help you to stay focused. In a fun way, you can use different colors to mark off your accomplishments. Use creative ways with stickers and markers to mark off each month you lower or pay off your debt.
Debt Reduction Tips
- Start by listing your debts
- Make minimum payments while attacking the highest interest loans or the lowest balances first
- Repeat and move to the next credit card or loan while rolling over the money used to pay off the other debt
- Repeat until every debt is paid.
- Remember to celebrate each paid-off debt
Expense Trackers
Using a bullet expense tracker is an excellent way to reduce expenses. It just requires you to list all your expenses and mark them as necessary or unnecessary. Then proceed to eliminate them from your budget. This should include costly subscription services or line items on your cable bill. Cut anything that you do not regularly use, such as an unused gym membership. The point is to eliminate unnecessary expenses that drain your discretionary income.
You can also eat out less and bag your lunch. Food cooked at home is always cheaper than eating out. Finally, find and eliminate any household expenses, such as cable. Find cheaper internet and phone service. There are always deals in this very competitive market. Therefore, use your expense tracker to find bills that can be eliminated or reduced to improve your cash flow.
Cash Flow Tracker
When money was tight due to being house poor, I started a cash flow tracker. I previously mentioned this type of bullet budget journal. In a spreadsheet, I repeat my monthly budget for twelve months. I add dates when funds are coming into our household and dates when bills are being paid. Therefore, I have a running total of the balance based on paydays. Hence, I have a balance of cash on hand, so I know if I need to add money from savings or push a bill into the next pay cycle. This journal has been invaluable for tracking and maintaining our specific goals when budgeting.
Types of Tracker Tools
Using your budget as your tracker tool to reduce your expenses is great. However, you can use a journal, notebook, or spreadsheet. You can also download or create a tracking tool. I have used a spreadsheet when I was reducing my credit card debt. I wanted to track each credit card monthly and yearly to see when I would be done.
It was important for me to see the end debt. For my car note, I used my “Family Budget” notebook. I quickly jotted down everything I need to know about paying off this debt. This was a “down and dirty” kind of journaling. I was ready to be done; I just needed to figure out how to do it. Hence, there is no specific bullet journal layout.
Recap of Amazing Finance Tracker Ideas For A Bullet Budget Journal
You can use bullet budgets for almost anything that requires some financial planning. Tracking your budget, cash flow, debt, spending, savings, and expenses, a bullet budget journal is an amazing way to visualize your goals and aspirations. You can use any of the tools at once or on a need-by-need basis. However, you can also use bullet budget journaling to keep track of your vacation expenses, Christmas gifts, birthdays, and anniversary parties. Wherever you have expenses, you can track your progress to ensure you stay on budget. I hope you found this blog post to be enlightening and informative on taking control of your finances.
This content is for educational purposes only. It does not constitute financial advice. If you need personal advice, please consult a financial advisor. I do not endorse any of the companies mentioned. Please research and do due diligence. I do not get paid if you click any of the links.
Additional Reading…
Budgeting For Dummies: How To Budget Your Money
Budgeting Activities For Teaching Budgeting To Kids