Do you keep your store and shopping receipts all over the place?
Ever since I realize that I have exceeded my monthly budget, I have kept a close tab my expenses. Tracking my incoming and spending each day has help me to be more mindful of my spending and hence reduce the daily expenses and impulse purchases.
Actually, if you sit down each day to calculate your expenses, it can really shock you the amount of money you are spending. And it will help you to figure out why you burst your budget or go into a deficit each month or could not pay your credit card bills in full.
If you are like me who is tracking daily expenses but may not have time to sit down and write down all the expenses daily, it may be useful to temporary store all your receipts in a single place.
It makes a lot of difference to being more organized and systematic.
What I did was I spend less than USD1 to purchase a simple transparent plastic case to store all my receipt:
If you are putting this inside your car (which can get very hot during hot or summer months), you may want to use a transparent mesh cloth material.
As this is lightweight, I would take this out when I go shopping so that I put in my receipts right after I get them instead of stuffing them all over the place which would make looking for them to be difficult.
However if I wish to carry very limited items (like going to the wet market), I would keep the bag in my home. If that being the case, I would mentally designate a place (usually my purse) to store these receipts first and then move them over to the transparent case.
‘Processing’ the receipts
While doing budget or expenses entry, I would often forget the actual amount I have spent so these receipts helped to keep track. Usually, I would discard the receipts after my record keeping.
However, there are cases where I am doing store purchases which I wish to write about these items later in one of my blogs. To do it I would need to remember the price of the items so that I can write about them later- for this I would usually restore in another transparent plastic holder.
Yes, it may sound a little redundant but I like to keep my temporary receipt storage folder as empty as possible. If I do not do this, the receipts would add up because sometimes it is hard to find time or inspiration to write the article immediately.
My expenses are not tracked for tax purposes. If you are tracking receipts for tax purposes, it is useful to find your own designated storage area/item to use to organize all these receipts in one place until you have a time to deal with them. Some people use old biscuit tin containers or plastic containers. Any system, so long as it works would do.
This gives you a peace of mind knowing the receipts are not ‘all over the place’. It really makes a huge difference for your emotional well-being. Paper receipts and ATM withdrawal slips – if there is not designated place to store them can end up cluttering your handbag, inside recycle bags, your car’s glove compartments and surfaces around your home.