Free Printable Savvy Budget Planner

I tried all the fancy budgeting apps, but for me, nothing sticks unless I write it down by hand. There’s just something about seeing the numbers on paper! This free printable Savvy budget planner is my easy solution for keeping my finances in check. It has all the essential worksheets you need to track your progress and finally feel in control!

The Savvy budget planner takes you through some of the budgeting basics in 13 pages at a fast pace, so put your seat belts on and come along for the ride!

I made this planner “step by step” easy, as I wanted to help everyone be successful and improve their budgeting skills.

If you have tried before but didn’t succeed, that’s ok. Get back up and brush off the dirt, and try again. Trust me: determination + this budget planner = success!

Want to save some time? Fill in your email and I will send this right over to you!

🔍 What is Included 

I used to think a budget was just a long “no” list, but I’ve learned it’s actually a “yes” plan! These free printable finance worksheets have helped our family say “yes” to the things that matter (like vacations!) by allowing us to identify where we can say “no thanks” to the things that don’t.

Here’s what’s included:

Vision Boards

There are 7 vision boards: Family, Career, Money, Quality of Life, Personal Growth, Health, and a blank one (so you can create new categories if you’d like).

If you haven’t used a vision board before, we will walk you through how to use it (there’s a How To section below).

It’s just like setting goals. For vision boards, you put words or pictures of what you want your life to look like, so you know what you are working towards.

It is extremely powerful, so please spend the time to fill it out!

Monthly Budget

There are two sheets for you to work on setting up your budget for the month. Don’t worry, we walk you through all of it. Print out several copies so you always have some in reserve.

Daily Spending

This is one of the most important sheets ever! I know that sounds overly dramatic, but it is true. I love how we all are seriously shocked on what we spend daily without even realizing it. This is one of the biggest eye-opening sheets included.

In the 52 Week Savings Challenge, I give you a ton of ideas of ways to cut back on your daily spending. 

Don’t ask me how much I spent on my fancy coffee drinks in a month. It was scary!

Monthly Expenses

Use this sheet to log in all of your monthly expenses, like your cell phone and power bills. Don’t forget to track those mystery autopay bills – they are easy to forget about.

This may seem daunting at first, but I hope my post on 28 Shocking Ways Frugal People Save Money will help you find some hidden jewels of potential savings for your family. 

Debt Payoff

Log in all of your debts here and start watching them decrease as you start to pay them off. You can plan your debt payoff using the Snowball Method or the Debt Avalanche Method when deciding which technique works better for you. 

📝 How To Use

Let’s be honest!  This is a big task, especially if you haven’t tried to budget before.  This will not be done in one day. Think of each step as a day in your journey. I can tell you from my personal experience, this is hard to do and is oftentimes emotional. So, to expect that you can crank these out in an afternoon, might not be achieved by everyone, and that’s ok.

👉Step 1 – Start with your Vision Boards. Write them out or cut out photos from magazines or websites. Either way, pick things that you want to see your life become.

Our family likes to travel, so I tend to put things that reflect travel so I can stay focused on my goals. 

👉Step 2 – Fill in the Monthly Budget sheets. You can see where it will start to come together a little bit now. It will take time to pull ALL of your expenses. Don’t forget to look at anything that is charged on a credit card or pulled from your checking automatically. It all goes on that sheet.

You may need a few months to make sure any quarterly or annual charges get added.

👉Step 3 – Daily Spending is one of the most crucial pieces of the binder, as this will show you where you are spending your hard-earned money. Most people go from “I don’t spend much each day” to “holy crapola!”

This is a sheet on which you need to write daily. Also, be sure you get the spending info from your other family members or make copies of the Daily Spending log so everyone has their own.

The truth is discovered when you write down every single time you spend money. We just don’t want to admit to it. Don’t skip a quick $6 debit swipe or $10 Venmo. Everything goes on here. 

👉Step 4 – Track those monthly expenses. You logged them into the monthly budget above but this sheet will help you track and investigate if there’s anything you can give up on or cut back.

For example: In the summer, we increased our Hulu subscription to $12.99/month. We’ve watched everything we wanted, so now we are decreasing our plan to eliminate Disney Plus. When looking at Hulu’s plans, I can do the plan with ads for $5.99 or I can choose the $11.99 option with no ads. Most people opt for $11.99/month because the extra $6 doesn’t seem like that much. 

Well, that is the hidden money I am talking about. How many things can you find hidden in your expenses if you dig a little deeper? Plus, you can live with ads. When did we get to the point that we have to pay for every little thing? Think about how many little things you are paying for that add up. 

👉Step 5 – Last, but not least, it’s time to use the Debt Payoff worksheet. Start logging all those debts so you can see the decrease happen each month. The feeling of seeing those numbers go down are awesome! 

👉Step 6 – Start tracking the 30 Day Plan that is included. This gives you a little baby task to do each day so that over the course of a month, your budget will not even look the same. Most of these are very small yet impactful. 

❗ Expert Tips 

If it feels like this is a lot and you are overwhelmed, skip the Vision Boards. It’s best to set some goals, but it is better to do something than nothing. 

If you don’t have full support of your family, work the Daily Spending sheet by yourself and show your family after two weeks the money you “found” by knocking out coffees, lunches and little things that you spent money on. That might be enough to help inch them in the right direction and join you. 

Track your accounts every week. Spending gets out of control so fast and a week is almost too long to go. I like to review them on Fridays or Mondays. On Fridays, I know what we have done and it sets us up to know what we have ahead of us for the weekend. If I review on Mondays, then I have a clear picture of what we did over the weekend. It really depends on how your brain works. 

Download & Print

✅Please fill in your email and I will send this over to you. You’ll be added to our email list and will get periodic updates on money-saving items and other free printables.

✅Once you download the PDF, open it with the free Adobe Reader (or any other PDF reader app).

✅Go to File->Print and hit the Print button. These printables were designed for regular U.S. Letter paper. For other paper sizes you can change the type of paper used from the Print menu.

Are you all in and ready to take a bigger plunge? Do you see yourself becoming financially free? Our 108 Page Budget Binder takes this planner and leaves nothing out. You are set for everything you need to become a budgeting master planner and I can’t wait to see you on the other side.