Do you keep your shopping receipts?

livalot

The reason I ask is because yesterday I spent over 2 hours looking through over 3 years of shopping receipts!:o

I kept them for all sorts of reasons.

1) I wanted to list the actual money I had spent on all my food bills, so I could work out how much I was spending each month on food and other items (never happened):(

2) So I could see how much things have gone up from one month to the next (never happened):(

3) wanted to start a price book so I could compare how much I was paying for the same sort of item in different supermarkets ( eg coffee in Sainsburys or in Lidl) (never happened):(


Anyone else do this or am I the only one crazy enough to have almost two bagfuls of receipts?

gayleygoo

3 years?! You poor thing that must've been awful looking through them all!

I keep them for a month, max, unless they might be needed for returns/warranties etc, in which case they go into the Drawer of Doom (the catch-all drawer in the kitchen ). I use a notebook to record my spends from the receipts, which are divided into categories such as "food ... household ... personal allowance ... chocolate ..." etc, rather than listing each item, and once I've totted up my weekly spending the receipts usually get tossed.

I like the idea of a price book in theory, but am not organised enough to do such a thing and would probably not use it much. I tend to know when things I buy have dramatically increased in price and will go for an alternative if I can. Some things seem to have no set price in supermarkets. Carte Noir coffee is an example - its "normal" price on Tesco in £6.48 for a 200g jar but I'd rarely buy it at that - it's on offer for £4 every so often and I stock up. It's often cheaper to buy the smaller jars anyway since the pricing structure seems so random!

Maybe try setting a time limit on your receipts? Get into the habit of writing stuff down at least weekly if not daily, and if you've had them more than a month without taking any of the info off them, then it's probably not worth your while keeping them any longer!

luxor4t

I keep till rolls until the bank statement comes in, then they are put into the recycling.
I keep the on-line grocery print outs indefinitely though - it is depressing to see the changes

fairtrade

I don't keep the receipts themselves but I do have A4 page-a-day diaries for the last five years. In these I have jotted down recipes, ideas, culinary tips and any purchase that seemed value at the time. Looking back through them what appeared a bargain was not always the case.

Auntie-Dolly

3 years - chuck 'em! If you are confident you are shopping carefully what's the point of keeping them? It sounds like hoarding and just the thought of it makes me depressed and panicky.

Steve059

I only keep them if they're for something with a guarantee, and then I scan them, as most receipts are thermally printed, which fades.

-taff

I keep them as above if there's a guarantee with them.
Otherwise they go in the compost and i transfer the amount i've spent to my budget spreadsheets

Frogletina

I have a spike which I use to put receipts on when I return from shopping - I keep them for a month and transfer details onto a spreadsheet. I do not identify individual grocery items, just the shop. Knowing how much I spend a month enables me to budget correctly.

Food receipts I throw away but I keep the ones for non-consumable items. Periodically I thin those out too.

Honey_Bear

It appears I am completely ana1 about this, then! Not only do I keep them, I even file them by month and have done them ever since I bought this house 20 years ago! Around the time of the financial crash I went through a really tight financial period and to keep track of every penny I started keeping a spreadsheet of all my spending (bank and cash) and I can now honestly say I can account for every penny. I constantly use the spreadsheet to track down how much I've spent and exactly what it was on. I will admit to having had quite a bit of training in book-keeping, so it's not difficult for me to use that skill as part of my household management routine. It takes a few minutes once a week or so and it means that reconciling bank statements, knowing the price I should expect to be paying for things and whether I can actually afford something are all straightforward. (I got hit with an unexpectedly massive vet's bill yesterday and I knew instantly I could cover it, but it meant no holiday this year.)