Save Your Receipts To Promote Frugality
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While packing for the move to the new apartment, I started throwing away all the receipts that I kept in my drawer for the past 2 years. Naturally, I started to become curious of all this spending through the last 24 months so I decided that it would be fun to just add up all the amounts from the huge load of receipts.
The total came out to be $18,495.34. Oh.. My.. God..
I felt a little disgusted because most of these expenses were not really necessities as my wife were taking care of the necessary expenses like groceries and utilities. To say that I wasted some money was an understatement. Instead of using $18k on eating out, electronics, entertainment, I could’ve put it into my savings account and be much further down my path to financial freedom.
I know, I need to spend money once in a while but $18k is a lot. Seeing this total gives me much more motivation to save money. For those of us that doesn’t like to save, perhaps keeping all the receipts for a few months and seeing all the money that could’ve been saved would be enough motivation.
What do you think? Would this work for you?
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Fed up with scraping the pennies together at the end of the month? It's time to get impartial and expert debt advice from professionals in debt management and possibly avoid bankruptcy with an IVA or another debt solution.10 Responses to “Save Your Receipts To Promote Frugality”
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Growing Money on February 13th, 2008 at 4:28 am Says:
[...] Save Your Receipts To Promote Frugality [...]
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Sunday Money Roundup - The Flu Attacked Our House Edition. | My Two Dollars on February 17th, 2008 at 7:01 am Says:
[...] Money Ning says to Save Your Receipts To Promote Frugality. [...]
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Mighty Bargain Hunter » Blog Archive » Welcome to the Festival of Frugality on February 18th, 2008 at 11:42 pm Says:
[...] Saving your receipts (and looking at them!) is a good catalyst for stepping up your frugality. Money Ning talks about the sticker shock when he did this. [...]
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5 Credit Card Habits that Save You Money | Your Expert Blogger for Credit Applications | Apply4-Credit.com on February 27th, 2008 at 4:40 pm Says:
[...] Save your receipts. If you have a receipt and you want to return something, the money is easily credited back to your [...]
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I would hate to save all the receipts, way too much clutter. But a good look every once and a while at our detailed credit card and bank statements wouldn’t be such a bad idea.
It sounds like it’s sleeting, but every time I turn on the outside light & look, nothings happening.
I did a similar excercise at the end of 2007. I had receipts from the entire year all over the floor. It would have taken me all day to add it up. I’d estimate it totalled more that $70K. Yeah, it made me want to hurl seeing all that spending. I took a pic and hope to post on my blog soon.
Congrats on your Wedding, firstly.
I travel for a living, and I save every scrap of a receipt. At the end of the month when I tabulate my expense reports, OMG at the crap I spend money on. I really enjoy having BOA help with some of the spending with their keep the change savings, but, I could be inspired to save a bit more!
I have been collecting all my receipts the past two months, since DH & I started having a stricter budget. I just put it in an envelope, but I also track as I go each month and deduct things from each area of the budget: car repair/oil changes, food, misc., entertainment, gas, etc.
I only save certain reciepts for stuff like warrenty or deductions. Everything else, I simply enter into my Money Plus software which provides me a detailed report on where my money is going.
I love my Money Plus.