21 Ultimate on a Budget Planner and College Supplies

Isn’t it wonderful to have supplies that are inexpensive and amazing at the same time? You have to agree when I say that every student is on a budget. Finding supplies for planners and bullet journals can come at quite a price tag. Attachable scales, various pens, planners and notebooks! With so many things in the market, it can get overwhelming.

I was once where you are right now. Hopping from shop to shop, trying to find good quality and cheap supplies for my bullet journal and note taking in college. After quite some trial and error I have come up with the list of in a budget good quality college and planner supplies that you can order from the comfort of your home.

In this article, I will take you through various stationaries, how I use them, and will give you an insight on my favourite items. This article has the ultimate list of low-cost good quality planner and college supplies that any student can easily afford. I also have free planner printables for you. All you have to do is subscribe to a list at the end of the post and check your email!

So let us get started!

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The Pens

This is the MOST important one. What would you do without a pen? Someone once told me, you are not an engineer without a pen. But I feel you are not a student without one. These are the list of pens I use for making notes and for my bullet journal as well.

I personally prefer gel pens over ballpoint pens, here are a few of my recommendations

• Zebra DX5 Liquid Ink Roller Ball
  This pen is my favourite and the one I have used for all my exams in the entire four years of college. With a 0.5 pen tip, I found this to write best for me.
• Uni-ball Eye Micro
  Another favourite of mine, it definitely falls under the budget price range. I have specifically used this pen for note-taking. It comes in a variety of colours. The pack of 10 colours is so affordable and can make your notes super easy to read through helping identify the more important points.
• Stabilo Fibre Tip
  I love fibre tip pens. They are really handy in making drawings and sketches and can be a perfect addition to bullet journal supplies. I use fibre tip pens mainly for my planner and bullet journal entries. They do not bleed through and provide perfect strokes for sketches. These pens are also available in packs of various colours.

The Highlighters

Highlighters are a part of my everyday study routine and also an essential item to my stationery kit. They come in a variety of colours and as the name suggests can play a major role in revisions. ‘Highlighting’ the main sections of the notes can really make an impact at last minute revisions.

They are also a great addition to bullet journals and planners. If you have seen in my ‘How to set up your monthly planner’ article, I use highlighters to differentiate my study priorities to blogging ones. This gives me an ‘at a glance’ look at my aims for the week or month.

My favourite and in a budget highlighters are

• Muji Twin Tip Highlighter
  I recently discovered these highlighters and I must say I am obsessed with them. What I love about these twin tip highlighters is that the highlighter part has a small window in it that makes looking at the text as you highlight SO SIMPLE. Now I have seen these kinds of highlighters in other shops too, they were either quite expensive ( I would have rather got a cheap highlighter) or were cheap and of bad quality. But the Muji highlighters were not only inexpensive but also of good quality. The pen has a side with a highlighter tip and one with a thin marker tip. It comes in a variety of colours. You get the multicolour pack at a great price!
• Muji Push Button Highlighter
  Unlike the dual tip pen, this does not come with a small ‘look through’ window on the highlighter but it is the same great formula as the dual tip pen. The advantage of this particular highlighter is that once it gets over, you can replace it with a refill easily. You get the entire pack of five colours for such a great price
• Staedtler Highlighter
  I feel this is the MOST standard set of highlighters. I am sure you must have used the fluorescent yellow highlighter once in your student like. During my school days as well as college these were my go tos. You could always find a Staedtler highlighter lurking around my school supplies. I still use them in my day to day study routine. Now the best part about these highlighters is the cost. It is so easily available and at such a low price point. You can either get the colourful pack or the single colour pack.

• Stabilo Highlighter
  Just like the Staedtler, these highlighters are basic and best. I love the variety of colours these come in. Pastels have become the new norm and I absolutely love the pastel pack of these highlighters. You can also get the basic pack of six. These highlighters are great and definitely in student budget!
• Faber Castle
  This another set which is pastel in shade and quite cheap which almost all students can make space for in their budget. This is a pack of eight in different colours. Do have a look at them!

The Planners

Everyone has their own preference of planners. Some want the extra accessories, puffy planners which are soo pretty but heavy on the pocket and some want the minimalist planners which might still cost a lot!

I love both these kinds of bullet journals, but the frugal inside urges me to stay away from them. So I embarked on a search for planners that are cute, in a student budget and fall either in the minimal or pretty category.

I used to absolutely love over the top planners that have so many sections but am now shifting to the minimal ones. One reason being the simplicity and ease of looking up at my schedule in one go. These are the planners I love and would suggest, and they all fall in the budget of a student.

• Muji Monthly Planner
  This is the planner that I have started using for my blog. It consists of 32 sheets by the month. 32 sheets essentially mean two years of most important tasks in one place. For a person like me, who is always losing things, this is the perfect solution. I have talked about this planner at length in my post ‘How to Set Up Your Monthly Planner with Free Printables‘.The price point of this planner is absolutely unbelievable. It is a perfect choice for a college student with millions of assignments who wants an ‘at a glance’ look at all the work and maybe a look back in the future. It is also very minimalist and completely customisable.

• Muji Weekly Planner
  This is the sister planner of the Muji Monthly Planner. Just like the monthly planner, it comes with 32 sheets with a week at a glance. These are fully customisable and you can use them any time because the dates are fillable as well. 32 two sheets mean about 64 weeks and that is more than a year. So, this planner is perfect for yearly use. These also come at an extremely low cost.

Why two planners?

Now you must be wondering, why must you carry two planners when you can have it all in one. That is a good question and the one word answer to that is organisation. For the longer answer, I feel that having two planners to individually tell me the most important tasks of the day make it more organised. I do not have to sit flipping through pages of my planner searching for the right page.

I have organised my planners such that I use the monthly planner to plan out my entire month in advance; the guest blog dates, my post upload dates, important collabs etc. On the other hand, the weekly blog is reserved for specific posts, when to write them, emails I have to make, projects I have to run etc.

The Note Books

Notebooks are versatile. They can be used from penning down thoughts to maintaining a journal. Instead of using planners I mentioned earlier, you can just use a plain notebook and convert it into a bullet journal! With so many options in the market, it can become difficult to get a good notebook which is also cost effective.

Bullet Journal

• Muji Spiral Notebook
  This is one of my favourite books by Muji. You will be surprised when you see the price. The quality of the paper is pretty good and you can get either the black, ruled or dotted book, and comes with a hard outer cover in black or beige. I use these books as my wellness and daily routine bullet journal. They are so customisable and extremely affordable.
• Faux Leather Bullet Journal
  Now, this is the fancier version. It comes with a faux leather exterior and dotted pages. It is a little pricier as compared to Muji Spiral Notebooks, but comes with its fair share of pros.

Notebooks for Notes

• Tops Subject Notebook
  These are a pack of five notebooks, each of 70 pages with three punch holes. The price point of these books is beyond amazing.

Other Stationery Items

We already covered notebooks, planners, highlighters and pens. If you have these items, you are good to go with making notes or writing in your planner or bullet journal. But there are a few items you could make use of in your study routine or planning.

• Brush Tip Pens
  I absolutely love these. Brush tip pens can be great for lettering in journals and as well as writing headings in school or college notes. The tip being a brush is quite flexible as can bend in a lot of ways providing the ease of lettering. Now, I use the pens by Miniso which have water-based dry ink. But the CBL watercolour soft brush pens work as well and comes in a variety of colours. And did I mention how inexpensive they are?
• Loose Sheets
  Some students like to write on notebooks and some prefer writing on loose sheets and later putting them together. Now, this can work well for those who tend to write different subjects in one notebook. Instead of dividing the notes and having the chance of needing more pages, you can just use loose sheets.Many students like to use just plain white sheets which are cheaply available or ruled sheets which again is easily available.
• Smaller Notebooks
  These notebooks might be useful for some and completely useless to another. They are smaller notebooks of about 30 sheets. I personally use the Muji Small Grid Notebooks for sketching purposes. The small squares provide excellent grid lines for sketching portraits.I also use the blank sheet Muji Notebooks for making lists and at times an alternative to my bullet journals because of their size and ease of carrying.
• Sticky Notes
  These are essential to my study routine. I use sticky note pointers to mark various pages or maybe lines in my notebooks. These are very helpful with borrowed books from the library when one is not in the liberty to use highlighters. I also use sticky note pointers in my handwritten notes.They are also helpful with planners. I use them for my reminders section where I do not want to waste pages from the book. I don’t need reminders in the long run so I use sticky notes which are easily replaceable. They also act as great bookmarks.
• Shading Pencils
  These are great in bullet journals. This is not really conventional but these are amazing. I prefer Faber Castell pencils or Staedtler Pencils. I have written an article on ‘5 Types of Trees to Draw Step by Step‘ for bullet journals.
• Normal Pencils, Eraser and scale
  Again, you can make do without these but they do come in handy. I prefer Faber Castell Mechanical pencil, Faber Castell Eraser and the basic scale.

 

All these items I feel can really help in the planning of the year ahead and are kind of essential to planning. These items are also my favourites and I recommend them to all my readers. Considering the budget of a college student is always under the hill, these items are not at all heavy on the pocket and are of great quality. Maintaining a budget is compulsory for a college student and these items can help plan out and keep your money at bay.

I hope you enjoyed this article and it gave you some insight on some bullet journaling items on a budget. Yes, there are a lot prettier things and fancier stationery out there which I love to use. But this list comprises of items that are definitely what I use on a regular basis and more productively than the fancy planners out there. I also have some planner freebies for you.

All you have to do is subscribe to my blog and you get amazing freebies right at your inbox. I also send a weekly newsletter as well as a bi-weekly update to your inbox 😀

Thank you for giving me your time and stay planned and happy!

Ciao!