Start your budgeting journey by gaining awareness of the most important factors that affect you on a regular basis. Auto-payments, credit cards and their interest rates, and even your bank account’s basic information. Having the important stuff in one place gives you the first step in getting clarity on your money situation. The daily and weekly money journal also gives you a glimpse of your spending habits and patterns. 

The key to effortless yet effective money management is automation. Once you have a grasp on what your current financial situation is, you want to put systems in place to make it easy to meet your short term goals that lead to BIG long term success. This is accomplished with the Budget Rules, Savings Goals, and Expense worksheet templates that you can copy and reuse from month to month. 

With the daily and weekly money journal templates, you can easily track your spending AND spending patterns to catch any mindless decisions. Too involved for you? I’ve also included a transaction log worksheet to simply list all your spending. You can use that to update your budget or just to keep up with what’s in your bank account.

But what’s planning for if you’re not keeping your future in mind?! Not only do you have a goals worksheet (prompts and lines to write on), but the mini event planner keeps you on track for short-term goals. Outline basic details and identify financial needs that you should be saving for. Lastly, the investment worksheets help you stay on track for future financial YOU even if it is decades away.