In our debt-ridden world where financial security is always a gamble, saving money is incredibly important. There are a lot of methods you can adopt to achieve your goal of saving money. Now granted the actual process varies and it depends on what item you are saving money for. However, one way to stay on top of this is to always keep track of things.
There are many ways to keep track of all of this. You can create different accounts for your expenses and savings. This way you’ll know how much is being spent and how much you’re saving. However, if you’re feeling creative, there is a more fun way to keep track of savings.
That’s by keeping a bullet journal savings tracker. It’s an effective and motivating way to keep track of how you’re doing when it comes to saving money.
What Is A Bullet Journal?
Most people have To-Do lists, planners, calendars, and much more to plan everything they do on a daily, monthly or even yearly basis. Well, it turns out calculating all those numbers can get boring. That’s why Bullet Journals have gained in popularity over the years.
Think of a Bullet Journal as a combination of a calendar, daily planner, and as the name suggests, it also serves as a journal or personal diary. You can split it up into sections for all three of these things, and much more. The best part is that there is no template to follow, and you can change up things to work best for you.
There are various styles of bullet journals out there but we’ll be focusing on bullet journal savings tracker or a savings bullet journal, to keep things simple.
Benefits Of A Savings Tracker Bullet Journal
A money savings tracker bullet journal is exactly what it sounds like. You set a goal for how much money you want to save. This could be either for retirement, a vacation, or some sort of luxury item, etc, etc. Keeping a bullet journal savings tracker will help you stay organized for any of these scenarios.
The organization is one thing, but after writing things down, you get peace of mind. Instead of worrying about how far away you are from your goal, you’ll always know the exact number. This is one of the many benefits of having a bullet journal money tracker.
A good bullet journal will always encourage you to get things done and move towards your goal faster. Think of it as crossing off a To-do list. However, in this scenario, we are moving up towards our goal, not eliminating things.
Bullet journals also inspire people to go after new ideas and test their creative skills. A bullet journal savings tracker does not have to be boring. In fact, there are a lot of great Bujo tracker ideas out there.
How To Set Up Your Own Bullet Journal Savings Tracker
There are a lot of bullet journal tracker ideas out there. Despite that, all these journal ideas can get quite elaborate and difficult to keep up with overtime. Sure, artsy drawings and colorful headers look great for social media (if that’s your thing), but they don’t contribute much to meeting your savings goals.
First off, decide if you want to save for one reason or a wide range of purposes. If it happens to be the latter, you’ll want to create a separate notebook for your bullet journal savings entirely. This way you can keep adding things as you please, and cross off old ones.
One of the best journal ideas we have is to keep track of everything. Dedicate two or three pages just to an index alone. Write the name of everything you are saving up for, and when you enter that item, add the page number in front of the name as well. This will encourage you to focus on everything at once.
Savings Tracker Journal Ideas
Finally, let’s move on to actual journal ideas so you can get some inspiration for yourself. Feel free to incorporate any of these into your own bullet journal savings tracker. Before we move on, remember that bullet journals are a personal thing. There aren’t any hard and fast rules on how you make your own bullet journal savings tracker.
The Expenses and Savings Log
This bullet journal savings tracker is exactly what it sounds like. It isn’t very creative or aesthetically pleasing unlike others out there. It is solely focused on practicality. Let’s say you already have some goals in mind, but you need to track all of your income, expenses, and savings in one place.
This is the bullet journal savings tracker to go for. Dedicate a couple of pages to this. Make separate rows for every month of the year. Also make separate columns for your income, expenses, and savings.
If you are saving up for long-term reasons, this will allow you to track how much you can realistically accomplish. Make sure the numbers are accurate, or at least roughly close. This way you can always be on top of things.
This bullet journal isn’t the most good looking as we said, but it’s the most accurate bullet journal savings tracker out there. Everyone should have some sort of this tracker in their bullet journal.
Specific Savings Tracker
Let’s say you don’t have long-term goals in mind, but want to set aside money for stuff you want to buy. Well, these types of bullet journal savings trackers are perfect when you buy something expensive. Making separate trackers for these items is a good way to focus on one thing exclusively.
These are the type of bullet journal savings trackers that you can get very creative with, they also happen to be extremely popular in many bullet journals. The most popular example out of these is the savings jar.
Savings Jar
Draw a savings jar of any size (depending on how much you want to save) in your bullet journal. Write your goal at the top, and break the jar into sections according to months of the year. Let’s say you want to save up for this item for a year, and it costs $6000. So every month you’d have to save $500.
As you successfully save up every month, color in the sections or cross them off inside your bullet journal. Once the jar is full, your goal is completed and your bullet journal savings paid off in the long run.
This is yet another one of the more popular bullet journal savings trackers out there. That is simply due to the flexibility and creativity it allows you. At the end of the day, that’s what bullet journals are all about.
The Wishlist
This bullet journal tracker is a bit more unorthodox. It’s not commonly seen in bullet journals like the ones above, but some would argue that it is actually more practical. It is more of a budget than actual savings, so let us quickly explain.
Make 5 different categories like groceries, possessions, enjoyment, health, and emergency funds. You can change all of these however you please. For this to work, you must have prioritized where you want to save money first. Remember bullet journals are all about staying focused.
Now start setting aside for all of these categories as you go through the year. You can do this in any order. Keep adding the updated amount you have saved for each category. Next, we move on to the wishlist part.
On a separate page, make a wish list of things you need or want. Now write the cost of all these things in front of them. The categories you made earlier will tell you where they belong, and if you can afford them right now. This bullet journal tracker is more of a long term thing than the others.
Useful Tips
That’s about the gist of it. If you go looking around on social media for bullet journal savings trackers, you’ll find a lot more specific stuff people have done with their bullet journals. With all of that out of the way, we have some very quick tips for you to get you started.
- Try to make your own system. Sure other people might be more experienced in this, but try to take it easy and see what works for you. Bullet journals should not be a hassle.
- Decide if your focus is productivity or motivation. If you want to treat your bullet journal as a log of everything, then it is more productivity-focused. If you need motivation, it should be more encouraging and have visual cues
- Get creative! Bullet journals are all about seeing how you can make boring everyday tasks into fun experiences. So have fun with it.
That’s all we have to cover about bullet journals for now. Bullet journals are definitely more effective than one would initially expect. They’re not just about looking good, they can help you get things done effectively. We hope this helped you with your money saving journey.