Money Saving Day 1: Budget Binder

I am going to do 2 posts today because I couldn't get one up yesterday and I am also bringing you a WHOLE NEW SERIES! I decided to do my first, out of many, series. I am going to do 3 days strictly to saving money. Now, saving money is a huge part of my life right now. Obviously, I am in college and I am trying to "live it up" but I know that someday I am going to regret the "living it up" and not saving up. So I decided to do a little bit of both so for the next 4 days I will be doing posts about $$MONEY$$!

First of all the most important tool: My Budget Binder

This is nothing fancy, all of the worksheets were either made personally by me or found on my Budget Planning Pinterest Board.  My binder lives on my desk so I can reference it daily and make sure I am on top of things. The binder is of course from Target and the page protectors and dividers are from Office Max.

The first thing you see when you open up the binder on the left is 2 pockets and I keep my paychecks from any job that I have at the moment (which I took out for the pictures) and my planner and some post its.

The first worksheet is my "Days to Remember" Page. I put any dates in here that I can't forget. They also go in my planner but the more places I put the dates the better I remember!

The next page I want to show you is my Money Plan Worksheet. This is the most used worksheet from the whole binder. You will see this week that I use Dave Ramsey's envelope system and this is how I use it. I have different categories for what I spend for the month. So this is how I keep track of what I have and how many months I am ahead.

The last thing that I have in the back pocket is my Packing list  and my outfit planner. As you know, I am planning for a vacation coming soon so I can have all of my outfits planned out that way as soon as I am ready to start packing I already have exactly what needs to be planned out.

My gift giving sheet is one that I can't show because I have plans for a surprise coming very soon for somebody who I KNOW is reading this so I can't show it but it just explains the gifts I am going to give and how much it will cost. This serves 2 purposes:
1. Its a place I can store ideas for gifts. As soon as somebody says I want this for my birthday, it goes on my sheet that way I have plenty of options come holiday/birthday time.
2. It keeps track of how much money I need to save for the holidays so I am not surprised by the big bill at holiday time.

So that is my budget binder. I am truly OBSESSED with it! It's my way of staying organized with finances and I absolutely love it. Do you have a budget binder? What do you use yours for?