Filofax tour | 2024 planner inspiration & chatty flip through

This is Filofax…with a wicked twist. Join me for a chatty flip-through, Christmas budgeting, and get fresh 2024 Filofax inspiration as we put next year’s diary together.

Get more Filofax and crafting content on my TikTok @ejcownley

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LINKS – INSERTS + DIARIES
– Passion Planner: https://passionplanner.com/products/weekly-2024-planner-elite-black
– Christmas planner inserts – Crossbow Planner https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/882354415/printed-christmas-planner-inserts?click_key=8bba07c7e184af72c12baffa5cd3ef2690a818fc%3A882354415&click_sum=d4344e10&ref=shop_home_recs_1&frs=1
– Filofax Finsbury https://filofax.com/products/finsbury-personal-organiser-filofax
– Faux leather monthly dividers – Crossbow Planner https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1016253472/leather-card-monthly-dividers-a5
– Filofax week on two pages (personal size) https://filofax.com/products/week-on-two-pages-diary-personal-sunday-start-2024-english?_pos=11&_sid=5198c99a6&_ss=r
– Monthly dashboard – Zsa Zsa Paper https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1090873457/
– Financial planning pages (PDF download) – PuffinPagesCo https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/777821104/printable-expense-tracker-personal-size
– Budget inserts – Crossbow Planner https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/529557965/printed-personal-planner-inserts-bill?ref=yr_purchases
– Goal planning pages – Crossbow Planner https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/489931886/printed-goal-planner-habit-tracker-goal
– Rosie Quinn https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/RQuinnDesigns

LINKS – VIDEOS
– Filofax fun playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLefOaRRbBC4nDhxSJD4Ugxqb1RQhfT3EA&si=OSji_rjTwgeNjLV8
– Trello video: https://youtu.be/H_3Cp9nPLqI?si=6Wv6GmfD57_SadC_
– DIY custom cover page | Craft with me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYPBvM-tJw8
– 2023 Filofax set up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvX7iFgEI9k

LINKS – MISC
– Stardust app: https://stardust.app
– Go Wish gift list app: https://gowish.com/?gclid=CjwKCAjwv-2pBhB-EiwAtsQZFBi4crzkEaPi70d2HRq27CcpGswDwWOvkSlPK5ScSrjlQ7ReuT8HnBoCttsQAvD_BwE
– Candy heart ring – Pretty Ugly Jewellery: https://prettyuglyjewellery.com/product/loveheart-candy-ring/
– Memento Mori skull ring – SLAB Jewellery: https://www.slabjewellery.com/shop-all/villeroi-skull-signet-ring-silver

Hello and welcome to another filea video I’m really excited to be filming this because I’ve been planning it for a really really long time I’m going to show you how I’ve been progressing with the current layout that I’m using in my FIFA at the moment and then we’re going

To set up my diary for 2024 I’ve got all the pieces here so I’ll talk you through them as we get set up so you know what’s what so this is a filofax fins spree that my mom bought me for Christmas years and years and years

Ago I used it ever since but defaulted for a couple of years to Passion planner and I really liked some of the systems that they used so what I did is I went on the hunt for Etsy creators who made inserts that were similar to the layouts

That I was using in my passion planner and I brought them over into my filea so I’ll let you know all of the creators that I have been using in this particular filea so that you can go and check them out on Etsy nothing here is sponsored but everything that I have

Used will be linked in the description box below so you can check them out I will also say that this is a great time of year for FX is everybody’s thinking about planning for the year ahead and you’ll find that lots of people go out

And indulge in a file aax or put one on their Christmas gift list so I just wanted and probably this isn’t a massively good idea in terms of you know staying on filofax is good side but I will say that you can find a lot of official fer faxes

In the secondhand Market if you go on Vintage or you go on depop and you type in ferax you’re going to find F faxes when people get these as gifts and it’s not their cup of tea they know that that was an expensive gift so sometimes they’ll just put it up on the

Secondhand Market brand new in the box for someone else to buy so that they can recoup the money money and I find the same thing with people who have good intentions and buy a filea realize that they’re not going to use it and want to get that money back again so before you

Buy new do hit up the secondhand market and see what you can find cuz these things are expensive you know okay so this is my 2023 file effects I’m particularly proud of this cover page for those of you who don’t know when I’m done with the year I archive my filofax

Inserts using these rings so that I can flip backwards and forwards and always find what I’m looking for in previous Diaries which means when I archive this at the end of the year I’ll leave all of these dividers in here and I’ll just take my daily Pages out put them in rings and

Then I got something I can refer back to I use my label maker here to make a nice little label so that I can always see what I’m looking at here are some previous examples for you as you can see I’ve left the monthly dividers in so that their diar are easy

To navigate and I also leave my budgeting pages in there as well just so that I can see financially where I was at anything else like the notes or the goals or whatever I’ll probably get rid of and then my address inserts I’ll leave those they

They they just stay in here I never really change those so this is the cover page for this year next year’s cover page I’m sorry but this is probably the best thing I’ve ever made this is Sophia cppa bimbo vampire by way of Clive Barker it’s just I mean I’ve outdone myself but

That’s you know that’s not for now so a couple of things have changed since I talked to you through my setup initially I started out with my monthly dashboards which as you can see I customize very heavily an example of a plain monthly dashboard is is this and

Um I’ve decided that this doesn’t work for me so I’ve made this instead I had a massive section up here for books this is my to-do list for the month this section is for my monthly Master mind meeting this section here is for my monthly tarot card and I found

That this wasn’t quite cutting it I still wasn’t really using this page for much other than to refer to this during my Mastermind meeting and to kind of see where I’m at in the month top down view so over the months I started kind of toying around with the layout and we’ve eventually

Arrived look isn’t this I I I’m not good at a lot of things guys but I am good at paper craft I’m going to say it all right somebody needed to come out and say it I’m amazing at paper craft this is just some of the

Some of the spreads that I’ve done this year you can tell I have a lot of fun with this what I’ll typically do is set aside some me time to sit down and just do my monthly dashboard I never do them all in one go I do them one by

One um so as you can see I’m currently in October and there’s been a little bit of a change so what I’ve started doing is using a plain sticker to block out this whole section up here and then I’ve used this half of it for the monthly moon

Just to talk through what this particular moon is all about blood moon is in October Spirits divination ancestors then I have a separate section for books and I had to blank this out because I started reading more books than there was lines if you can see I’ve

Started trying to cram them all in here and it just looks like a mess so I blocked it all out and um put it neatly there masterminds got a much bigger section compared to what it had at the beginning of the year to be fair these

All vary in size like quite wildly but if you compare this where I’m cramming my notes in and haven’t used all of the to-do list I was like why am I why am I doing this so now I’ve got a nice big Mastermind section with only a few notes

And for month notes I’ll do things like order the firewood book The Chimney Sweep you know buy filea inserts things that I know I will need to do in and around that month they’re just prompts and reminders um so yeah that’s how that’s changed I’ve had I’ve kind of just taken

Complete charge of of this and the layout and I have bought more monthly overview inserts from zazar paper that I’m going to be using again next year and I did use them last year as well um as you can see here you can see that year on year they have gotten more

Elaborate this is relatively simple compared to the kinds of layouts that I have nowadays if you look at that it’s it’s quite basic and this I’ve got a bit uh over the top so that’s how I’ve adapted that I also was quite particular about my notes section for this year um I started

Logging all of my my wins on this lovely little note card that I got from my friend Rosie Quinn on Etsy and I like that idea so well that I’m actually going to use this note card for 2024 to log down all of my wins and to be fair these

Wins they just Veer wildly from the mundane to quite extravagant things so I reviewed Evil Dead rise for metal Hammer magazine this year and there was a director Q&A and I was at the UK premere one of the most exciting things I’ve ever been paid to do for work just wild

I loved it I was in a gunship music video um that was really really fun but also I read five books in a month you know and I was brave enough to network at frightfest this year and I saw bustard and Hansen perform together and

I made a business Tik Tok so it’s small things and big things I knitted a pair of leg warmers you know I like to celebrate the full gamut of wins um my goals actually I do love this format and I will use it next year

Because I like to use my time on this planet wisely and I you know I I’m very driven to achieve the things that that I want to achieve but here’s the thing with with the goals this year so I had a really hard year last year I had me and

My husband bought our very first home but the moving process was definitely not smooth it was a total disaster and at the same time my mom was taken into a hospital and she very quickly passed away shortly after that and so it was a very heavy very stressful

Year and I found that even though I came in into this year feeling like okay I’m ready to get moving again I’m ready to kind of start doing things and and stop feeling so overwhelmed I found that I just don’t have the energy this year I have

Had zero energy to give any sort of a whatsoever or to do things I’m like I can’t bring myself to give a right now and ultimately I’ve decided that’s okay I’m probably suffering from burnout and fatigue emotional fatigue from last year I’m just enjoying the fact that

Things are starting to feel a little bit more stable in my life we’ve got the house kind of roughly where we want it to be we’ve got our ducks in a row I’m starting to feel okay again so it’s not a huge deal to me that I didn’t achieve

All of these I never launched she’s got guts my horor newsletter um I did do some of my heart goals I didn’t join a choir yet um but to be fair I’ve done all right I’ve done okay and this is a lovely number of wins um so I will bring this goal tracking

System over into 2024 and perhaps you know I’ll be a bit more motivated to to do things I did hang out in real life once a quarter so that’s that’s something I achieved um I also set up my notes section with a reading list and a gift wish list and an area um

For me to just spew out all of my ideas and a rolling to-do list and stuff I haven’t used this that much and here’s why so in terms of the reading list my thinking behind making this was so that I would always have a pipeline

Of stuff I was excited to read and that would get me reading more because I’ve really struggled since the pandemic to focus and concentrate and and get back into reading and I used to read a hell of a lot obviously I’m a freelance writer and I studied English at GCSE a

Level degree and Master’s level so I’m big into reading and I just have struggled with it so I thought do this this is the way to go throughout the year I’ve developed a brand new system that I actually prefer so I’m doing a note on my phone with with a

Checklist instead and what I’ve started doing is browsing water stones to find the types of books that I’m really interested in I’m having a little read I’m having a little feel I’m taking a photo of the book cover and then I’m coming home logging on to my Buckingham sheare Online Library System searching

The books that I want in the library system and and then getting them shipped to my local library where I’m reading them completely for free the number of books I get through especially if they’re really really good and I’m gobbling them up it would cost me a

fortune to buy from scratch so I used the library and I also download on my Kindle cuz I’m trying not to buy physical books unless they’re secondhand and I’m trying not to buy physical books full stop so this kind of system didn’t really work for me I needed something

That was a bit more on the go a bit more intuitive where I can take photos and kind of list them out so I’ve resorted to using my phone for this now same for my wish list so I actually downloaded an app called wish which allows me to save

A link and create like a master gift list if I can um I’ll I’ll put a screen recording up for you so that you can see it allows me to mark out the Most Wanted gifts and then I can just send people the link and they can click and and

Choose what they want off of the off of the list and that’s really helpful for me because I can pinpoint exactly what the item is so that there’s no confusion writing it here just creates an extra step in me having to then Google it find

A link and send it so um this has been sueded there’ll always be room for a brain dump though so I’ll probably keep this in here this absolutely did not use it um and I do like to keep a back page for events that are going to be coming

Up in the next year and I don’t have inserts for it yet so that’s all good my finance Pages absolutely I’m going to keep doing those um the pages that I use at the moment were um a a pdf online download that you can just print out and kind of

I used just my normal printer paper which meant means that these are a little bit flimsy and as you can see they’re a little looking a bit worse for where I also edited it to say what I wanted it to say rather than what it was

Already on here but I really do like this system so I treated myself to some actual inserts from crossbow planner which I’ll be using next year and I know that your banking app especially if you use something like monzo will tell you exactly where you are and what you’ve

Spent and what where you’ve spent it and whatnot something about listing it out and checking off the bills as they come out and and checking in with yourself as to how much you’ve got left and how much is spare something about doing that physically and listing it out makes it

Sink in for me if I’m just always looking at a graph or looking at a digital thing on my phone it just doesn’t go in I don’t take the information in whereas if I’m writing it and I’m ticking it off I’m regularly checking back in with my with my phone

I’m regularly looking at what’s coming in and what’s going going out and it keeps me a lot more in tune with what I’m spending and what my bills are and the act of listing my bills out also really highlights for me stuff that I don’t need anymore subscriptions I can

Get rid of Etc so this is absolutely something I’ll keep doing I’ve been able to get my spending under control save a lot more money just by doing this so it’s definitely worth it another thing that’s changed since the beginning of the year so I’ve been

Using this section up here as my monthly to-do list if you’ll remember way way way back in the day I had a kind of Dutch door thing that I was doing but that was just a little bit too much maintenance and a little bit too

Much to look at on the page I prefer just to have my diary open next to me at my desk and just be able to just see everything that’s there without having this bit in the way so I move notes to up up here and I I was like oh we can

Still make it cute we’ll have a little bit of washi tape we’ll still make it cute fast forward to the end of the year I’m just drawing a little thought Cloud around it that right off do you know what I mean keep it easy um I am

Still color coding my pages to match up with my Trello board if you haven’t seen my video on how I use Trello to pipeline my freelance tasks I’ll leave it linked for you below but the long and the short of it is that I color code all of the tasks in my

Trello workboard to correspond to the different days so I just highlighted my fif effects in those same colors so that I’m kind of seamlessly showing my brain that it’s the same thing if you get me another thing that I was doing that I’ve I think I will decide to stop

Doing is tracking my cycle so intense ly so what I would do is I would say when one phase is beginning and another phase is ending and I’d number the days here to correspond to the day of my cycle and i’ also kind of draw a line under the

Day so my ovulation is colorcoded blue so I’m just drawing a blue line under the days I’m ovulating so that when I’m looking at my file effects I’m like oh this is occurring during my ovulation or this is occurring during my Lal phase and it’s kind of easy for me to

See what phase I’m in and what day of my cycle I’m on which is really great but it also requires a lot of kind of mental gymnastics at the beginning of my cycle to kind of go through and and fill all this out so what I’ve done instead is

I’ve actually downloaded an app and I don’t know if you’re seeing a uh a theme here all of my beautiful FIFA systems being superseded by an app um but I downloaded an app called Stardust and my sister put me on to it and I just love

It it’s kind of a full moon witchy type of an app and it will send me every morning a notification to tell me where I am in my cycle what my hormones are doing and how I can potentially expect to feel in terms of my energy or my mood

Or in terms of how I’ll feel in my body like will I be bloated will I be tired will I have aches and pains Etc and it’s so meticulous that I don’t need this system cuz I’ve got someone automatically every morning telling me where I’ll be at so

What I’ve decided to do is keep numbering the days of my cycle cuz that’s nice and easy it doesn’t take a lot of effort for me to do that and um I’ll probably leave the intimate details of which phase of the cycle I’m in to my

App okay so with that out of the way shall we put together next year’s firef facts here she is at the moment I’ve just used magazine covers to protect the inserts and I will be using this page here as my freelance holiday tracker so if you haven’t

Seen let me see if I can find it in here here we go I use this for my holidays so that I can have a top down view throughout the year of where my holidays occur and it’s just really nice it’s a nice way to commit to taking time off

And to check it off as you go otherwise it wouldn’t take any time off cuz it’s never a good time is it to take time off when you’re a freelancer so you’ve really got to make time for it and by using this system it ensures that I’m

Taking time off every 3 months and I know some Freelancers don’t need very regular breaks but I’m the kind of writer who absolutely does I get burnt out so quickly so this will help me have regular time off and then as you can see I’m just stuck to the same system I

Used before unfortunately I got bloody inserts that start on a Sunday which I hate but I wanted this space up here with the little mini calendar so this is what I went for um you’ve just got to get what you can blim and get your hands on really isn’t

It so to this I will be adding my finance bill payments and I will be adding my monthly overview inserts and I will be doing my card my wins card now I wanted my black leather look monthly device dividers and they accidentally sent me white ones and at first I thought these are

Disgusting I’m going to use them to Archive my old pages and I’ll just use my old black dividers in the new Diary but actually something about this with this is really kind of 8s hair metal groupy like white vinyl with gold jewelry I don’t know I just I

Kind of like it so I’m going to keep that I also have some note Pages anything that I don’t use in the year I save in this in this book so I can make inserts last for a long time for example this is the divider that I use for my

Christmas planning section which I actually do need to add to my current diet diary cuz it’s about time I started budgeting but as you can see this is exactly what you blomen need when you’re trying to plan Christmas honestly and this has lasted me about 3 years so Um I’m going to use the spend tracker the expenses the to-do list and the shopping list and I’ll add that into my my current Diary He [Applause] Okay so I’m happy with this for the meantime as you can see I’ve taken out a chunk of pages from this file OFA cuz I want to make room for some of the months ahead just so that I’m not caught out when I’m planning do you ever get that thing

Where you’re at the dentist and someone is like oh we’ve got an appointment for early next year and you’ve got no idea whether or not you’re free because your other brand new diary isn’t with you so that’s what this is I’ve already got appointments for the beginning of the year

So uh it’s worth it to me to just have those in front of me and also by taking out those pages I will now of course have room for my Christmas inserts which I used this beautiful little divider that I Made and I’m going to pop in my gift spend tracker my expenses my to-do list and my shopping list just into here and then I will start planning my Christmas budget so that’s pretty much all that I’ve got for you here today new diary old diary I will check back again

In the new year once these inserts are fully inside this book and all of my systems have been properly transferred over obviously these need to be sexed up a little bit um I’m going to have some fun with this and kind of name it like what I

Have with this one one I’ve just decorated it a little bit uh then I need to fill out my my goals for the year as well in my goal tracker uh I haven’t really considered what I’m going to be aiming for next year either so um something to think about in the long

Term so thank you for joining me today I hope you found this helpful or at least mildly entertaining if you’ve got any questions about the systems that I use or the inserts that I’ve got here or how I’m made my dividers or anything please give me a shout in the comment section I

Love chatting about stuff like this so I’ll be delighted to help out and yeah thanks for watching and I’ll I’ll catch you in the next One