Last month Mom saw a budget book for sale on a Facebook ad… if you’ve never heard of a budget book before it’s a binder with numbered slots for saving cash. Esentially there are 100 numbered slots (literally marked 1 through 100) and you put the assigned amount of money in each slot. You can save one slot every day, one slot a week, one slot a month but when you’re finished with the entire book you’ll have 5050 saved. Ideally you’d fill two slots a week and complete the book in about a year.
At least that’s Mom’s plan!
BUT her plan did not include shelling out the $30 plus shipping to buy the official book. Not when I have an entire host of planner supplies sitting in my office. So I ordered a set of photo pages for my happy planner and a set for her 6 ring binder and I set about making two budget books… so that we can save all our money this year.
Depending on how many of the supplies you already have you may be able to put this baby together like I did… cheap and quick!
Either way let’s get started.
Supplies:
- 4 Pocket Photo Pages for Happy Planner
- 4 Pocket Photo Pages for 6 Ring Binder
- Happy Planner Rings
- Planner Cover of Choice
- Cricut Maker 3
- Cricut Roll Holder (for smart vinyl)
- Fine-Point Cutting Blade
- Cricut Standard Grip Mat (that’s the green one!)
- SVG Cut Files (FREE at the bottom of this post).
- Bright 360 Floor Lamp
- Weeding Tool
- Scraping Tool
- Smart Vinyl
- Transfer Tape
- Acrylic Ruler
Step 1: Upload your SVG
Are you ready for the fun part? Let’s go ahead and prep your cut files!! Go ahead and upload the SVG for this project with all of the numbers laid out in their neat little rows. I used an easy to read, blocky font for this project and you can grab the cut file for it down below. OR you can type out all the numbers from 1 to 100 in your own font to have a completely different look.
It doesn’t take that long to type so whatever floats your boat.
Whether you’re using my SVG or your own numbers once they’re alllllll written out go ahead and weld the entire block of text together. The weld button is down in the bottom right menu under “combine” and if you need help learning Cricut Design Space I’ve put together an entire post showing you exactly where all the little buttons on the Design Space dashboard are and what they do.
But for today we just need to weld our text into one big text block.
That will keep everything exactly where it is with the proper spacing… which will make transferring all the numbers so. much. easier. Without welding Cricut will automatically fit all the numbers on your cutting mat in a way that saves the most vinyl… just take a look at the picture below. You would have to search for every single number. Need the number 25? Better find a 2 and a 5 and put those together!
While I’m all for saving vinyl this is one project where it’s not worth it.
Luckily once our project is welded we’re good to go, we can size it to 11.5 inches wide, click make it and move on to cutting our vinyl.
Step 2: Cut your Vinyl
Oh baby… this step is so fast. Since we’re using smart vinyl in our Maker 3 we don’t need a cutting mat, we don’t need to pre-cut our material… PLUS the Maker 3 can cut smart vinyl soooo fast. There’s not even time to go get a snack.
Which is what I usually do while my projects are cutting.
Of course, this is just a vinyl project at heart so you can grab a cutting mat and just about any Cricut machine and you’ll be fine. Just make sure to size your project for the appropriate size cutting mat (your Cricut Joy will be able to cut these vinyl numbers but they have to fit on a 4.5 cutting width instead of 11.5… you would just adjust the spacing of the numbers before you welded and re-sized them).
Either way for this specific project I selected “without cutting mat” “smart vinyl” and more cutting pressure before loading my vinyl into the machine and hitting start.
Volia! Instant numbers!
Step 3: Weed your Vinyl
Ready for the fun (yet tedious part?) to begin? We have 100 numbers after all and they all need to be transferred onto individual pockets. Let’s start by weeding our vinyl.
I cut my large text block into two row sections so they were easier to handle and then weeded each one individually. This black smart vinyl was easy to weed so I didn’t really need my Bright 360 but use whatever makes things easier for you.
The main goal is to remove the vinyl around the outside of the numbers and then all the little inside portions… the inside of the 0, the small triangle inside the 4. Most of these small areas are the same size and design so it’s pretty easy to just pop them all out… just be careful when you’re weeding not to accidentally rip anything.
Some of the areas (like the upper section of the 5 and 6) need a little more guidance being removed than others. Use your weeding tool and go slow… when you’re done all the excess vinyl should be removed leaving you with sleek, simple numbers!
Step 4: Transfer your Numbers
Talk about tedious… I watched the entire Justice League movie doing just one notebook worth of numbers and still wasn’t finished.
That $30 plus shipping notebook was looking pretty good about now! But while time is money this wasn’t a hard process and I actually like repetitive work like this… it’s relaxing.
I cut a small section of transfer tape and used the lines to pick up my first number… lining the number up within the grid of the transfer tape. Use a scraping tool (or the back of your weeding tool) to firmly press down on the transfer tape until it bonds with the vinyl number and then pick up the transfer tape… with the vinyl number attached.
Make sure to line your pocket up straight over the guidelines of an acrylic ruler and then you can apply your first number directly to the center of the pocket. Press firmly and then remove your transfer tape leaving the number behind!
Then repeat, repeat, repeat!
I found that you could use one square of transfer tape for about 10 numbers before you needed a new one… just make sure to keep twisting it around so you’re not using one spot of sticky every time.
Step 5: Assemble your Budget Book
Now that all your pages are done all that’s left is putting everything together! For my Happy Planner version I used a standard cover and metal rings to put the actual budget book together… then I put it in my hard cover for a bit of extra stability.
It’s not perfect since the pocket pages have space for 7 discs and the standard cover has space for 9… but that’s ok. I don’t want to spend time or money making a custom cover when I already have one I like. It’s just a smidge big!
Mom’s binder fits perfectly… it’s a 6 ring binder and the pages just slot right in.
Perfection.
Step 6: Start SAVING MONEY!
Now you’re all set! You can start saving money immediately… which is the whole goal! I saved money for a week or two before this so that I would have a bit of cash to start off with.
It’s much more exciting to have a book with money in it then an empty book.
Just ask Mom’s sad, empty, no money book.
Bwah ha ha ha!
We decided to fill two pockets a week for the next year… in no significant order. If it’s a paycheck week and I can fill 98 and 99 then great. If it’s the end of the week and I need to fill 1 and 2 then that’s what I’ll do. Slow and steady y’all.
I’ll see you at the end of the year!
Leave a Reply