I will be honest and say that most if not all of my inspirations for my monthly bullet journal setups come from Pinterest or watching a 10-15 minute video of someone else doing their own.
Though I typically keep it pretty simple when it comes to my setup, as I am not someone who is very artistic, lately I have been getting a little more intense when it comes to how I go about creating my setup. And by intense I mean, I’ve added more color instead of the usual black and maybe a sticker.
The first thing I always do when I set up my journal is creating a cover for the month. Since February has Valentine’s Day, I decided that nothing can go wrong with a good old fashioned heart! The next page has an overview of the month, like a standard planner, and I will then add whatever dates are important to me, instead of the ones that are already on the usual planner.
The next page is where I have my budget tracker. Towards the end of last year, I used to try to keep track of my sleeping schedule, how often I actually went to class or if I was drinking water, and the list went on. However, I always ran into the problem of forgetting to keep track of those things and it also wasn’t really helping me. I have a crappy sleep schedule and yes, sometimes I miss a couple of classes. When I started my new setup this year, I decided that instead of tracking things that I cannot keep up with/ aren’t very helpful to me, I decided to track the one thing that I know could be useful. Money! If by the end of the month I had spent more money than I anticipated, I can look back and see what I need to step away from. This can be hard because sometimes I spend too much on food, but unfortunately, we live in a society that thinks $10 an hour every two weeks is enough for food. Frick you capitalism.
ANYWHO, my weekly setup is actually very simple (and I made it even more simple for next month). I basically put the whole week in two pages, starting from Sunday until Saturday, and I’ll give them enough space so that I have a good amount of room for my tasks.
Some extra things are that sometimes I will write a reflection at the end of the month, if I remember or if I feel that I need to take a step back. It’s also great fun to read them later on when you’re done with that specific bullet journal. I also have a couple of pages where, if I do something fun that month, I will dedicate a page to it. I have the date of the event, if I have receipts I will tape them on, wristbands and photos. I think it’s just a good way of keeping those momentos without having to shove them in a box and not see them for a long time!