Franklin Covey Pocket Planner - Should You Buy It?

 

[VIDEO TRANSCRIPT]

 

Hello my friends, I hope you're doing well. In this video I'm going to do a review of the Franklin Covey pocket size planners. So, if you really need a small compact planner option, then this video may be something that you're interested in.

 

In this video I will be reviewing the pocket Franklin Covey basic Spacemaker vinyl zippered binder in the color black, the pocket original two-page monthly Ring-Bound tab and the pocket white line pages.

 

If you're new here, hello, my name is Tonya, and I make videos on practical and functional planning. And if you just love planners like I do, I hope that you will hit the like and subscribe button. 

 

So, let's open up the pocket cover. So here is the pocket cover up close here. And as you can see the spine kind of curves and like that. This is a zippered pocket cover. And it's called “The Spacemaker”. And I know Spacemaker has like the corners are kind of curved like that. So here is the spine. And here is the back of the planner. So, if you measure this pocket binder, this is about seven and a half inches tall and about five inches wide. So here is how the zip tie looks.

 

So, on the inside, you get one page lifter, so you get to pin loops, they're not elasticized on the back, you get card slots, now these card slots, you will need to put your cards vertically. So that means like this or this don't fit but you get the idea of card slots that need to go in like that. And it has like this band. So, the cards will go on there like that. And then there is a pocket here.

 

So, who is the pocket version for? Sometimes you need a Satellite Planner. And that means it's a planner that is easy to carry and tinker around with you. And you just need a place to quickly jot down something. Some people get the smaller pocket size version and then have a larger size planner that they keep at home or that they don't carry with them as much and they carry around the pocket version. So of course, the pocket version is going to be your most portable option out of all the sizes because of how small it is. 

 

Now the one thing about if you decide to get a pocket version in addition to your regular planner, then you can't get away from having to duplicate writing in two places.

 

Now I must tell you that I'm not too impressed with the quality that I see here with this binder. Notice how the pen loop isn't-  I don't like to bash planner brands. Okay, if you didn't know I also sell binders in my shop it is very hard to get a high-quality item. So please don't look at this video and say, “Oh my gosh, she's just being”- I'm just trying to help you guys make good purchase decisions. 

 

So, this binder, the pen loop, is sown crooked here and there are some loose strings so I don't mean to be critical. Not at all especially when I'm in the business myself and it's easy to have a planner manufactured and it's not up to your standards. Please take this with a grain of salt if you decide to buy the pocket binder and yours look like this. You know of course you can return it and get another one. 

 

This is how the little rings look: The rings there are six rings and here these rings are about an inch wide. So, one thing I want to do is this is a binder that I sell in my shop at Tonyaplans.com And if you're interested in my binders, you can save money with discount promo code Tonyaplans10 I wanted to compare the ring size. So I wanted to know if the ring size of a pocket is the same as a ring size of a compact. So let me see here. I’m trying to kind of- no it's not the compact size rings are just a little bit taller, but it just doesn't seem like from my naked eye that there's much of a difference. 

 

Now this is a binder that is a compact size and it's really easy to hold in hand as well. So if you're in the store you're trying to check out and you need to pull out your wallet and pull out some cards, this is just as good as the pocket size to use for portability. 

 

 

Another thing that my Viktoria binders do is that they can be used with the chain. Let me just show you this quickly. And this binder here. This comes in black color as well that you see here and it comes in this pink color and see how you can carry that as a wallet or as a purse super, super cute, very, very functional. But if you don't want to use the chain, you don't have to, it's optional. So, this binder also comes in the classic size, so it comes in a compact size and classic size and it comes in both the pink and black colors. And the classic size fits Franklin Covey inserts and it has the Seven Rings. I hope that you will check these out on my site if you get a chance. 

 

So going back to this pocket size binder, let's put the planner inserts in here. These are the original weekly planner inserts. Now one thing I was surprised about is how small these inserts look compared to the binder but the binder does have to be close. You have to have enough clearance to close the binder to zip it and all that. So, it does need extra space here for that. At first glance like this is why I'm saying: So, if you take a look at the planner pages and just compare it to the size of the binder, look how much bigger the pocket binder is compared to the pages; so, I was just a little surprised by that. 

 

This is my first time buying a Franklin Covey pocket size binder. I'm just trying to get used to everything but this is how it looked into rings. So, let's quickly flip through this binder you have your information page you have two years of annual calendars. You have your monthly index on the front here then your month is spread across two pages. So, if you want to know how much room you have the right you have about .75 inches. So that's three quarters of an inch to write in the boxes. There are light lines there to help keep your handwriting straight, here is a section on the side and there's a section at the bottom for notes. On the back you have your master tasks for personal and business items and all of the monthly tabs are the same.

 

 

The tabs are laminated and these monthly pages are a harder cardstock so these are just the monthly tabs. At first, I was thinking that I bought the weekly planner pages but I didn't. These are just the monthly tabs. You can buy weekly planner pages and daily planner pages for this. So, let's look at the white line pages because this was the pocket size. I wanted to get white line pages because I thought that because the pages were already small because it was pocket size that I would want extra space to be able to write. So, this is just something if you just simply need a place to quickly jot down notes. There's a dark blue Navy line at the top here and at the bottom but I really liked the wideness of the lines and that is the end of this flip through. So please let me know if you own a pocket size planner. Do you use this as your main planner or do you use this in addition to your larger size planner? I would love to know how you use your pocket size planner. 

 

I really encourage you to leave a comment because people read the comments underneath the video and they make purchasing decisions and sometimes something that you say in the comments can help someone decide one way or the other. Please don't forget to like this video. This is Tonya helping you feel more organized, so this can be your best year yet. Take care