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Clever Fox Budget Planner Review (Pros, Cons and Video Walkthrough)

Posted on by Rachael

Clever Fox sent me their daily and weekly planners to review in the past. Since I liked those, I decided to purchase the budget planner and see if it was as good.

I purchased this planner myself and all opinions are my own. This post contains affiliate links. If you click one of the links and make a purchase I’ll receive a small commission in exchange for referring you.

Quick facts

  • Size: A5
  • Softcover
  • 18 cover colors to choose from – gold, black, purple, peach pink, light pink, hot pink, turquoise, light blue, green, red, dark blue, orange, brown etc.
  • Sewn binding
  • Neutral inside pages
  • Pen loop
  • Budget goal planning
  • Savings tracker
  • Debt tracker
  • Each month has 8 pages – goals, budget, expense tracker, budget review and dot grid page for notes
  • Summary of the year (spending by month)
  • Christmas budget
  • 1 Sheet of budgeting planner stickers
  • Pocket folder
  • 1 Ribbon bookmark
  • Lasts 12 months
  • Undated
  • 120 GSM paper
  • 110 pages

I found this planner on Amazon (affiliate link) for $20 USD.

Clever Fox have 2 budget planner versions: the budget planner and the budget book (from what I can see looks much the same as the budget planner but with a smaller page size and less cover colors to choose from).

Let’s take a closer look!

To enlarge the screen of the video, click the square icon in the bottom right hand corner of the video (it will say ‘full screen’ when you hover your mouse over the icon).

Subscribe to my YouTube channel for more planner videos!

The Cover

I love the clever fox covers. Yes they are a bit plain like most sewn bound notebooks but they have tons of different cover colors to choose from including less common like mint and gold.

Gold makes me think of coins (money) so I chose the gold cover. Love it!

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Just over 0.5″ thick (approx.1.5cm)

Clever fox budget planner review monthly pre-filled goals spending expenses tracker debt savings goals affordable minimalist video flipthrough pros and cons pen testing_22

At the front is the financial goals section with 10 goals – plenty for an entire year

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Savings Tracker

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Debt Tracker

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Clever fox budget planner review monthly pre-filled goals spending expenses tracker debt savings goals affordable minimalist video flipthrough pros and cons pen testing_17

Monthly Budgeting

Each month has a generous 8 pages to plan:

  • Goals
  • Budget
  • Expense tracker
  • Budget review
  • 1 Dot grid page for notes

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Clever fox budget planner review monthly pre-filled goals spending expenses tracker debt savings goals affordable minimalist video flipthrough pros and cons pen testing_04

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The columns on the monthly budget are too narrow. Ok for printed text but if you’re going to hand-write in the blank rows they provide, you’re probably not going to fit more than 1 word. A better layout would’ve been to split the 2 columns across 2 pages. This would create room for a difference tally against each category.

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Clever fox budget planner review monthly pre-filled goals spending expenses tracker debt savings goals affordable minimalist video flipthrough pros and cons pen testing_07

This expense tracker would look so good color coded!

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The line spacing of the planner is on the small side at (varies between 5 and 6mm).

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Clever fox budget planner review monthly pre-filled goals spending expenses tracker debt savings goals affordable minimalist video flipthrough pros and cons pen testing_09

Christmas Budgeting

At the back of the planner are 2 pages to plan your Christmas budget, gifts and spending.

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The only thing missing in this planner is a dedicated page for spending on gifts for birthdays, anniversaries etc. throughout the year.

The pages lay flat on their own no matter where you open to in the planner:

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Summary of the year

At the back of the planner you can tally up all of your expenses by cateogry. Since this planner is undated, you enter the months whenever you started it.

clever fox budget planner undated summary of the year monthly spending by category budget minimalist

clever fox budget planner undated summary of the year monthly spending by category budget minimalist sewn bound

There are also 3 dot grid pages. The dot grid is close together at 4mm (most notebooks have 5mm dot grid spacing).

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There’s a pocket folder at the back with 1 sheet of budgeting stickers:

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Pen Testing

As I don’t do budgeting on paper anymore, I won’t be keeping this notebook and didn’t do a pen test. 120 GSM paper (that this planner has), is normally prone to some ghosting. However when I did a pen test on the other Clever Fox planner I have, there was no ghosting or bleed through. Here are the results of that pen test:

clever fox dotted journal notebook review pros cons highlighters pen testing bright white paper budget planner daily weekly monthly

clever fox dotted journal notebook review pros cons highlighters pen testing bright white paper budget planner daily weekly monthly thick paper affordable

Pros of the Planner

  • Portable size
  • Lightweight
  • Minimalist color scheme – use as many colored pens, stickers, highlighters etc.
  • Bright white paper
  • Well thought out pages
  • Good line spacing
  • Undated – start using anytime
  • 1 page of planner stickers
  • Multiple cover colors to choose from
  • Pages lay flat on their own
  • Pen loop
  • Affordable
  • Pocket folder for receipts (or planner stickers!)

Cons of the Planner

  • No tabs
  • 4mm dot grid line spacing is a bit squished (I prefer 5mm dot grid spacing which is what most dot grid notebooks have)
  • A dedicated page for spending on gifts for birthdays, anniversaries etc. throughout the year would be handy

Would I use this planner?

I budget digitally using these Excel spreadsheets I made. However if I was still using pen and paper I’d consider this planner. As you can see from the very short cons list, I really like the design of this planner and it has an affordable price tag. It would be even better if the 4 expense tracking pages were reduced to 2 pages and the monthly budget page was spaced out across 2 or more pages instead.

Update: Clever Fox also have a coil bound version of this planner available on Amazon (affiliate link).

More budget planner reviews:

Planning Tips:

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clever fox budget planner review undated 12 month planner category expenses bright white paper neutral design dot grid expense savings tracker debt sewn bound

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