Is it necessary to save every receipt once the expense has been recorded in the budget expenses? I have grocery store receipts coming out my ears! -Julie
Is it necessary? No.
Or at least, let’s hope not, seeing as I currently don’t have a single grocery receipt saved!
I personally disdain clutter–especially paper clutter–so I would likely go crazy if I tried to save all my shopping receipts. Truth be told, I only save my grocery shopping receipts until I have time to post about my shopping trips and then I throw them out immediately. The only time I will hang onto a receipt is if I have a rebate or if there’s a possibility I might be returning the item.
We keep detailed tracking of our bills and other expenses which change somewhat each month (my husband track these in Quicken), but for the items we pay for with cash using our envelope system, believe it or not, we don’t keep detailed track of each of these expenses. Yes, that might seem shocking to some of you who like to account for every penny!
We have found, however, that it works great for us to just put a specified amount of cash in our envelopes for each of our different spending categories for the month. When the money in the envelope is gone, it’s gone. We’ve used the envelope system almost all of our married life, so we’ve gotten pretty accustomed to being able to divvy up the money so it lasts the whole month.
If you want to have detailed reports of all your purchases each month, this system wouldn’t likely work for you. Bt works for us right now–and best of all, it’s very simple!
Do you save your receipts? Why or why not? What’s your system for tracking your expenses? I’d love to hear!
photo credit: Functoruser