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I started my first bullet journal in October 2017 and I’ve reached the end of it just in time for the New Year. I’m so excited for a fresh new journal.
The first page is always the hardest part for starting a new journal, so I actually kept it blank! I never know what to do with that very first page that never quite opens all the way. I think eventually I’ll go back and add a quote or drawing, but for now it’s blank.
If this is your very first bullet journal, check out my detailed post that teaches you all the basics!
Year-at-a-Glance
So the first spread is my Hello 2019 cover page along with my Year-at-a-Glance. The Year-at-a-Glance pages are such a pain to make, and I always seem to mess up (see August), but they’re useful and they look nice at the beginning of a bujo. It sets them apart from a regular journal and makes them feel like a planner.
Future Log
And if you didn’t have enough fun writing out every single date for the year, why not do it again for a future log! I decided to try out a new future log this year because I didn’t really find myself using my last one. For the last one I had the whole year on a 2-page spread with blank boxes for each month, and I just wasn’t crazy about the functionality. This time I have 6 months on each 2-page spread and I wrote out the dates for each month. I think this will be a lot easier for me to actually see the events and tasks I have planned each month as I migrate them into monthly and weekly spreads.
Holidays & Birthdays
This page is a bit redundant to the last one, but I think it’ll be very useful in remembering to put in birthdays in my monthly spreads. It’s also a good reference page to see when every holiday is without having to Google it.
Budget
One thing I want to get better about tracking in my journal is finances. I decided to put a very simple budget at the beginning of my journal that tracks monthly income and recurring monthly bills. Of course each month there will be other expenses, but I’ll track that in my monthly spreads. This is just a good way to see how much money should be available each month for those other expenses.
I saw this on My Life in a Bullet’s instagram and I just loved. I knew I had to put in my journal somewhere. So I decided to use it as a quote page to break up all of the planning pages.
20 Before 2020
I do have a regular goals pages in my journal that’s broken down by personal, financial, bullet journal, and health. It’s not a super pretty page, but it’s a necessity. So I decided to do a page that was a little more fun and less serious. This is a page of 20 things I’d like to accomplish before 2020. It’s still a work in progress, but I’ve got all the big things that popped in my head right away.
At the back of my journal I drew out a grid to keep track of my Tombow Dual Brush pens. I loved that I can easily see every color I own on one-page instead of rifling through all my pens. It’s also helpful to see what each color actually looks like on page. They all look slightly different in different notebooks, so this will help pick the right colors for a spread.
So, that’s my 2019 set-up. I’m really happy with how it turned out and I’m excited to start using this new bullet journal. What kind of pages do y’all always include in your journals?
