How to budget using a $1 notebook | How to set up budget | how to save money | budget 101

Hey y'all, it's Jordan from Jordan Budgets. Today I want to talk with you guys about how to set up a budget and how to stick to it using just a $1 notebook. I will share everything that I have here down below in the description if I can find it, but I did just get this notebook from Walmart. It is just a plain regular notebook, though. You can use any notebook you would like to use. You don't need this one. Everything else I'm using too, I'll go ahead and list it just in case you're interested. But again, you don't need any of these things. So let's first talk about how to set up a budget very quickly and then how you're going to stick to it by using your notebook to track everything and to kind of keep up with it. So first off, I am going to make a larger or a longer video talking soon about how to set up your budget, how to determine how much you need. But I believe so many of us are overcomplicating our budget, is the long story short. I think that we say, oh, we have this much money and then we start breaking it into categories. If you are just starting a budget or if you are like me and you've reached a point of overwhelm or maybe your income has lowered like mine recently has and you are just needing a fresh start and to kind of reorganize your budget and kind of get everything under control, then I believe the way that I'm kind of going back and doing things is a great starting spot or restarting spot. So a quick couple minutes, let's talk about our budget before we talk about how we're using this to track our budget and kind of keep on the correct path with our budget, right? And stay on track with our budget. I have recently gone back to the basics and I'm no longer breaking things into categories and saying I have this much for bills. I have this much for work expenses because that is a major part of my personal budget is my small business and the expenses there. I have groceries and things that come up for the kids. We just exited birthday season as I like to call it. My boy's birthdays are exactly two weeks apart. And then my niece's birthday, she just turned five. Her birthday is the day after my oldest son's birthday. So there's two weeks of birthdays like back-to-back. It feels like anyway. And so I just had a season of spending a lot of money on birthdays. And typically I would say, oh, well that should come outside of my normal budget because I usually have this much on groceries and I spend this much on this other. Well, I've recently just said, hey, I know I have about $1,000 per week. That's a pretty safe number for me. Again, I do, my income does change because I work for myself. But $1,000 is not a low budget for me, but it's like realistic, right? $1,000 per week is what I get. So if I decide to spend $800 in one week on birthdays, I better not need gas. I better not need very much groceries because I have $200 to pay anything else. And that includes my bills. So that is just my personal budget and that's something I'd like to go into more detail in a future video. If you'd like to see that kind of video, please let me know in the comments below. I would like to break up that idea a little bit more and talk about it more. But the very basics is, take what you make per month, divide it up by how many weeks are in that month and it does not matter what bills you have that week or whatever, that's how much you have to spend. So another example, just one more example before we move into this, is I currently pay $800 towards the mortgage. I live on a family property. So I share the mortgage cost with some other family, even though I'm a single mom. I say long story short y'all, but then we will go make a short story long real quick. So sorry that I do that, but it's just reality of this channel. But my mortgage portion is $800 per month. So if I have not slowly been saving out of my $1,000 per week the month before, then that very first week of the month, $800 of my weekly budget is going to go towards the mortgage. And then I have $200 for gas and groceries for that week and we better not need much else, right? So the idea is to save, of course, this channel is a cash budgeting channel. So if you watch any of my other videos, the idea is to save and get ahead. So big bills don't throw off your week like that, but just a basics, just a basic idea of how I'm handling my budget right now. And again, if you want to hear more about that, definitely check out some other videos and let me know in the comments if you'd like to see a true back to the basics style video. But in this video, let's talk about how we're going to set a budget and stick to it. Because assuming you already have a budget in mind, whether you're using the method that I just said, which is this is how much money I have per month, per month, per week, and then breaking things up after that, what's really going to keep you on track and sticking to that budget is tracking your budget, tracking what you're spending, tracking where the money's going. I think tracking and writing everything down and keeping up with their receipts, I think it's important for two different reasons. One, it lets you see as you're writing it down, it lets you see exactly what you are spending. So sometimes you're going to write things down and you're going to say, oh my goodness, I didn't realize I had this little amount of money and it's going towards bottled water. For example, tracking your income and expenses is truly the thing that is going to keep you staying on budget and able to stick to it. So I wanted to show you guys because I know it can get so overwhelming with all of the budget tracking planners and methods that people use, but you truly do not need more than just a dollar notebook, a 50 cent notebook, a $2 notebook. You can use something more expensive if you want to, but in my opinion, this works just as good and I will take it a step further and I will say if you are just starting to track, this is the better first step than something expensive. And then even a planner. I would start here because this is not going to overwhelm you and this is going to give you the flexibility to use it with your personal expenses and for you to figure out what your categories even are because if you buy a planner or something that has a little bit more structure to it, you're probably, if you're just starting, you barely know what your categories are. You might think you have a good idea, but realistically until you start writing everything down, you're going to realize things are coming up consistently that you didn't even realize and you need to work on getting rid of some categories and some items. So to me, just a blank notebook is a better place to start. Now, let's start. Let's talk about how I'm using this and how I would use this if I were using only this because complete transparency, I'm actually using this to track food and meal plans and more like the budget side of meal planning. So of course it has like a food cover. I have a planner which I can't show you guys how I'm actually using this because it has so much of my personal information mixed throughout that my planner would just give away too much. I don't feel comfortable with putting, you know, where I'm at day to day out there. I'm using these two things and if I weren't using the planner how I would use this. So for complete transparency, I am using this just to track food and I have a planner where a portion of my planner like this portion goes to tracking all expenses that are not food related. So just as expenses happen, I'm writing them down in here. I am keeping an eye on my accounts and my cash every single day. I've made it a part of my morning routine. It's actually kind of therapeutic to check in with everything every day, but that is something you will need to do is make it a routine to check into your accounts and to track your cash and how you're spending your cash if you are a cash spender. But every day or every morning, I go back and write the day before. I'm just going through my accounts and I will highlight. These are like dual tip highlighters. Y'all, I know I'm already going to. I already know I'm going to get comments that say you are so scattered. Pull it together. I can't. I literally can't, but I do my best to get the point out there. These are dual tip highlighters. So I like these for like travel purposes because they have two completely different colors on them, depending on how you move the highlighter. You're either using purple or you spin it and you're using green. You know, anyway, and the tape is absolutely not needed. It's just something I used to decorate sometimes, but I will just simply write down what was spent either as I'm spending it that day. Sometimes I get behind though and I'll catch up and write it the next morning. And then after I write it down, I kind of color code pink is usually stuff for me and then yellow is stuff like birthdays and like off not normally on the schedule colors. Blue is my boys and then green is work and that's not always the case. But you know, just to give you an idea, that's kind of how I do things and then I have a color for automatic purchases as well. So I will kind of color code it just so as I'm looking back, I can see what was spent and kind of keep an eye on things. But the general idea is I write down expenses as they happen. And then as the week goes on, if I don't have a bunch of money left, if I have just a little bit left, then that tells me that I can't be spending more that week. It kind of keeps me in check overall. I also track out of that thousand dollars per week. I track business expenses. So that has its own color. Like I said, that's typically green. I track cash also that I'm pulling. So if I pull cash and cash stuff it right now, we're working towards paying off debt. I have a debt binder that I'm cash stuffing and I have a one month ahead binder that I'm cash stuffing. My goal currently is to pull about $300 per week and stuff into those savings accounts. So those savings or debt payoff also comes out of my $1,000. The idea is keep it simple. Keep it simple to begin with. Set a clear budget of say $800, $1,000, whatever is applicable to you, whatever your budget is, and make it a goal to stick to it that week and you will be surprised the things that you stop purchasing and even more so when you have money left at the end of the week or in the middle of the week and you want to make a purchase for yourself, you don't feel guilty about it because you know what's in the budget and what is not. One more thought before we move on to this and how I'm using it because this part is going to go pretty quickly now that you guys get the idea of what I'm doing, but something else that's really cool about tracking it either in just a simple planner somewhere or in here is you're going to get to the point to where you've been doing it long enough to where you can flip back to the month previous. So you can flip back to the 28th of last month and you'll be able to see, oh, I had this car payment come out or I had this automatic purchase come out. So you can like look at a weekly spread from the past and kind of know what automatic things are going to come out that week without overcomplicating it because I know there's a lot of ways to track like, oh, I have a bills page that says, oh, my bills come out on these days, but sometimes that can get overwhelming, especially if you're just starting. Now, y'all know me. I'm a planner person. I love budget planners. I sell budget related stuff, but the idea of right now in this video and this conversation is keep it simple, especially if you're just starting or if you're reaching a point of overwhelm and I'm just trying to let you know that if you just keep track of your expenses on a daily basis, even without all the fancy budget planner stuff, you can still flip back and see what's going to come out kind of that week based off of what happened last month, the month previous and so on. Don't overwhelm yourself. The easier you make this on yourself, the more likely you are to stick to it, right? Okay. So how I am using this and in a minute, we will talk about how I would use this if I were using only this and not using a planner whatsoever. Okay. Like I said, I am using this for meal planning and keeping track of our food expenses because I will say out of all of the things I feel like this is the thing I make the most excuses for. This is the thing that I get way out of budget very quickly. And I'm finding that I'm literally two weeks in on tracking food y'all and I can already see a huge difference in my spending and my shopping and what I'm picking up because this is keeping me accountable. So how I'm using this is I am just using a paper clip to hold on the receipts for the week. And then once the receipt is once the receipt once the week has passed, I'm stapling it. So this first week that I did last week is stapled. I've been budgeting for more than two weeks y'all, but this is my first time putting it in this planner. So if you're like what you just started this, how are you telling us what's going on? But I can already tell that it's working and I am using this similar system in my planner. So this is the receipts from last week and I think it's really fun to keep this because it kind of shows me where I might have wasted money or maybe what was on sale that week. After this week, I noticed I was spending $20 out of my like 200 ish dollar budget. I spent $20 just on water and I felt like I didn't even get that much bottled water this week. And so typically it's probably like $30 I'm spending on budget on water. So this week I actually spent $200 in my weekly budget to get a reverse osmosis like water purifier thing. So now I'm no longer buying water. So that is just something that my budget kind of showed me something else. I saw is I would like to get away from Walmart purchases because I have an Aldi really close to me and I feel like the prices are better there. So I'm just using this by writing out meal plan. It just has meal plan and then the week and then I'm writing what dinners we ate lunch. I tend to make a ton of soup and then freeze a lot of it. And then I'm thinking like every week if I make a super two then we will have a stockpile of soups ready for lunch if we want that. Anyway, this is not necessarily a meal planning video, but I am using this to track dinners lunch breakfast this week, but I kind of wrote out a shopping list and that is exactly what I need for the dinners or what I needed last week. And then I'm tracking what I actually spent and then if there was some large restocks like this week, I restocked like basically two months of toilet paper two months of K cups like coffee cup and then two months of paper napkins. So that restock was $61. So I'm kind of just letting myself know. Okay, I did have a bunch of restocks. It was a more spendy week, but it's because we did $61 in restocks, right? And then this is this week which we are still in the middle of it, but I spent $55 at Aldi spent this week and then I'm kind of tracking dinners breakfast and lunch because meals are the thing that really get out of hand for me. Like I said, that's why I'm really honing in on this notebook just on what is my plan for food? And then it's making sure my receipt is attached to it so that I can kind of compare prices and make sure I'm getting things on sales. That is another thing with my food shopping is I've started shopping a lot of sales at Aldi or like if it's Aldi does a lot of like fresh fruit, fresh fruits and veggies on sale for the week. I'm sticking to what's on sale that week. And I think it's going to have a major impact on my meal planning, how I plan what we're going to eat and my actual budget for food. Okay, use your notebook to track what you're spending. For me, I'm honing in on my grocery and my food spending so that I can really track it. But tracking is the important part. Now how I would use this notebook if I were just using the notebook if I weren't using the planner, I would use it the exact same way. I'm using it now, but I would just make this a two page like a spread on both pages. I would put this meal plan and the meal budget because that is such a big impact in all of our budgets. I would put your meal plan and your meal budget and spending tracking that all on one page. And then I would just paperclip the receipts of those meals on this page. And then all other spending I would do on the other side and all those receipts going here. So to show you this week actually we'll just take this off. I would just have it just like this spent for the week. I'd keep it down here. I'd keep the meal plan nice and open so I can continue to track that and kind of plan that. And then over here I would have spending for September 9th through the 13th and then I would just be tracking those things as they happen. So Monday if I spent $13 on a violin book for my kid, which is exactly what I did. I would I would write that down here. Tuesday same thing track all of your spending all of your saving all of your credit card debt that you're paying towards all of those payments. And by the end of the week you want to see that it totals your for me $1,000. That's what I would want to see down here that everything totals $1,000. I personally am not leaving any money in the bank because if I don't spend my $1,000 on bills, business, or living expenses then that extra money is going towards debt payment or the savings binder. So I'm trying to like clear out the $1,000 every single week, but I'm trying not to go over that. And just like I'm keeping receipts down here for the meal plan. I would keep receipts down here for everything else. And truth be told I might be moving all of my stuff into this one binder instead of it just being a food binder because I've been loving this idea so much and I love the fact that my receipts are right here with that week for me to kind of look back on if and when I want to or need to. I think that is it for this video. If you have any ideas that you would like to expand on this or you would like to share in the comments, please do. All of us would love to read it. We would love to see your comments and ideas and how you might use something like this or if you have something similar that's not quite this, please let us know that in the comments too. I would love to see that. If you're not yet subscribed, please go ahead and subscribe. It would mean more to me than you could know and I really enjoy growing this budget community. I will be focusing a lot on a kind of new budgeter or a budgeting 101 or like getting back to the basics. I'm focusing a lot on that right now. And so if you're enjoying that kind of content, please let me know by subscribing and commenting and liking the video. Also, you will see for me at the end of the week. I will be sharing some new things that I'm putting up in the shop next week. Next week, we will be celebrating me being on YouTube and Etsy for three years. So there will be a shop sale as well as some things launch. Of course, if you can't afford to purchase those things in my Etsy shop, it is not necessary or required. But I'm just giving you guys a heads up. If you are interested, there will be a video later in the week talking about those new items. If you're not interested, don't let those videos deter you. I do have a business that is all like cash budgeting related and making it cute. So there are going to be times that I share my own stuff that I sell. It is my full time income. So I am walking a fine line trying to really share some cheap, budget friendly ideas and some ideas that I truly love. But when it comes to budgeting stuff, it is also my business. So it's hard for me to not share that because I am so passionate about that as well. So if you're interested in that, keep an eye out for it later in the week. If you're not interested in that, I do have some other beginner friendly and affordable options of how to track and how to budget and like setting up cash budgeting things. I have those in the works as well. So keep an eye out for either of those videos if you're interested. As always, thank you so much for being here. I appreciate you and I'll see you again soon. Bye bye.