Living Well Planner
The Living Well Planner as a household planner. For my personal planner, I definitely need a daily planner to have enough space for everything that I keep in it. That being said, I love the Living Well Planner as a family command center. And there are lots of great options for the cover that mean it can fit any personality.
The Living Well Planner is a weekly, spiral-bound planner created by Ruth Soukup at Living Well Spending Less. Other popular weekly planner in the horizontal format include the Erin Condren Life Planner and the Happy Planner. I think the Living Well Planner is the best planner in this group for several reasons, especially the high quality paper and construction.
This is an undated planner. That means that you do have to spend some time setting it up when you first receive it. While this can take a little time, it makes it possible to start using the planner immediately rather than having to wait until it’s “start date”. I got my entire planner set up in under two hours so I don’t think the time commitment is too much.
I’m a self professed planner nerd. I seem to rotate between a Franklin Planner and Simplified Planner for my personal planner. The Living Well Planner serves as the command center for our home. This has been a game changer for our home. This amazing planner gives use enough room to plan our family’s whole life.
During my weekly planning session, I put the family calendar in the planner so that we can easily check everyone’s schedule. I also enter the household cleaning and maintenance tasks for the week in the daily to do list area. With my health issues this is very important. This is what allows the other members of the family to help out with the chores.
At the bottom of the weekly spread is the menu planning area. We use this area to plan our evening meals for the week. Being a family of four adults, breakfast and lunch are up to each individual. This area is large enough to also note who is responsible for cooking that night also.
Finally, in the right hand list column, we keep a listing of household projects that we want to do soon.
The Living Well Planner would also make great individual planner if a weekly, spiral-bound planner is what you need. It would be the perfect planner for a motivated college student or a busy stay-at-home mom. Not sure what you need? Read my post on How to Choose a Planner to help you decide what type of planner is best for you.
The Living Well Planner currently comes with 5 hard cover options – fun leopard (new in 2022), fresh floral, signature bold stripe, mini stripe, or navy. The floral, leopard, and stripe planners all have the brightly colored tabs and pages that Ruth is known for. The navy has a more toned-down gender-neutral navy tabs with navy and orange pages.
In the front of the Living Well Planner are some forms to help you set your long-term goals as well as places to keep important dates and information. it also has spread for your year at a glance which is a great place to keep family birthdays, anniversaries, and important celebrations.
When you purchase a Living Well Planner, you not only get the physical planner, but you also get access to Ruth’s “Crushing It” community. This includes her Crushing It Bootcamp email series to help you get a jump start on things like setting up your planner, setting goals, breaking them down into to-do lists, and getting control of your finances,
This planner is a little different than most other planners in that it doesn’t have sections for goals, meal planning, finances, etc. on each page. Instead, each of these items is incorporated into each monthly section.
At the beginning of each monthly section, there are pages for monthly goals, goal crushing, project planning and a monthly calendar. After the weekly planning pages each month are pages for a monthly budget, monthly expenses (great for a small business owner), thoughts & thanks, and notes & ideas. Having these in the monthly sections helps to make sure that you are reviewing them on a regular basis.
The weeks start on Monday in the Living Well Planner, rather than a Sunday start like other planners. It took me a little while to get used to this but I must admit, I really like it that way. It keeps your weekend together at the end of the week. Also, if you do your weekly planning on Sunday, it has you looking a full seven days ahead rather than just six.
At the end of each month there is a monthly expenses page so you can keep track of your discretionary spending during the month. That page also has a column for any money plans and goals that you want to record. The Thoughts & Thanks page is a great place to keep track of the things you’re a grateful for. Finally, the “Notes & Ideas” page can be used for whatever else you need to make a note of each month.
The tab for each month even has an inspirational quote to help put you in the right mindset for planning.
I talked a little about the weekly pages above when I discussed how I use the planner. There is also a column for maintaining an ongoing to-do list of items that aren’t assigned to individual days. And a “Big Days” block at the bottom to note any upcoming days or celebrations you might need to do some advance preparation for.
If you feel like you still need more space each week, upgrade to the productivity bundle. This bundle includes the “Weekly Wizard” sticky notes and “Daily Do-It” sticky notepad.
All in all, the Living Well Planner is a very well thought out planner. It does a great job of helping you focus on the things that are most important in your life. I highly recommend this planner for anyone who wants a weekly, spiral-bound planner.
If you try out the Living Well Planner, let me know how it worked in the comments below.
