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My Bullet Journal! An In-Depth Guide

It has been HIGHLY requested for me to do a full, in-depth guide or post about my bullet journal.. so here it is!  I’m new to my bullet journal as well, so I’m sure as I go I’ll learn more and more about it and figure out little things that work for me, but for right now, here’s what I do!

As I said before, my “style” for this bullet journal was inspired by another studyblr: staticsandstationary.  The top banners and such are all from her styled bullet journal.  They looked fairly simple and I thought that they would work perfectly for me as well! I will list all of the materials that I use at the end of this post, and if you have questions as to where the stickers are from, just send me a message and I will try and link you right to it!

I’m going to go through it with you section-by-section, so I hope this is helpful! I plan on doing a video on this next week as well, if that’s something you guys are interested in.


Photo 1: Legend and Index

When you first open my bullet journal, this is what you see!  On the left is my legend.  This includes all of the different types of bullets I have and what they mean, and then a few color variations for personal things and work things. When it comes to school work, I use different colors for different subjects, but I plan on creating separate legends on a page at the beginning of each semester.

On the right side is the beginning of my index.  This is something I keep going throughout the use of my bullet journal.  Every time I enter into a new month, I put the page numbers for the end of the previous month and the beginning of the new month.  It seems silly, but the further you get into your journal, the much more convenient it will be to have in order to find certain pages.

Photo 2: April Monthly View and Expenses

On the left is April’s monthly view.  I go down the line and put the numbers for the date as well as the first letter of the day of the week.  It helps me keep track of things at a glance.  This month only has beginning at the 15th, because that’s when I started my bullet journal.  I used different colors for different courses (this was around finals time).  I didn’t include those in my legend because they were the same colors I’d been coordinating with all semester, so I knew them by heart and didn’t feel the need to include them.  Pink still accounts for my personal tasks and events and orange is work-related things.

On the right begins the expenses.  This is for the month of April only.  I sort all of my expenses per month because I find that it makes it much easier to flip to your most recent expenses.  I don’t have a key for the colors in this either.. but oh well.  For these, I have three different colors: green, blue, and orange.  Green means that it was a reasonable and unavoidable expense (groceries, gasoline, etc.).  Blue means that it was a fairly reasonable expense but not 100% necessary.  It’s my in-betweeny.  Orange means that it could have been avoided (fast food, impulse buys, etc.).  I created a chart where I put the item on the left and the price on the right.

Photo 3: May Monthly View and Expenses

Here is May’s monthly view and expense page.  Yes, I skipped past some pages for April’s daily calendar.  I will show you those for May.

Photo 4: May Monthly Spread

Here is the first weekly spread for the month of May.  I create these to-do lists as I go, usually the night before.  As you can see on Friday, when I go shopping, I include the shopping list of the things that I purchased on a post-it note and I leave it on that particular day.  This way, I can keep track of when I bought certain items.

This is also when I started incorporating my stickers (:

Photo 5: May Monthly Spread

Here is another weekly spread.

Photo 6: May Monthly Spread and June Monthly View

Here begins the monthly view for June.  Yes, I planned ahead for you guys to kind of give a better example.  This monthly spread obviously doesn’t have a lot going on yet.  As I go through the month, I’ll add things to the monthly view.  I don’t keep everything in the monthly view, obviously.  Just large events or things tI need to remember at a broader glance.

Again, if you have any questions as to where any of the stickers are from, don’t hesitate to message me!

Photo 7: June Expenses and June Weekly Spread

This is my most recent page.  Obviously, June 1st is about a week off.  I planned ahead here so I could show you what I have been doing.  I got a few questions about planning ahead.  What if you have tasks you know that you need to get done on a future date?  What do you do to remember them?  I actually haven’t mastered this yet.  I still use my Lily Pulitzer agenda for that.  I keep all of my to-do lists for future dates in there, and then when it’s time to fill out my bullet journal, I refer to it and go from there.  for now, I’ve been planning on things that I need to do when I get back from Florida.  Those things are in pencil on the bottom right (if you can see it!).  I wanted to include that as a little tip.  You can always use pencil or post-its and erase and remove them later!

I hope this was helpful for all of you guys!  

Here’s a list of the supplies that I use:

Moleskine Large Squared Hardcover Journal

BIC Cristal Pens (Bold for Colors)