I was just curious, is there anyone out there that tries to keep tabs on their purchases with receipts? I have a debit card yet I generally make a habit of paying for things with cash. As such I try to chronicle what's spent with spreadsheets (which are really depressing to look at considering how much I spend on certain things - damn those video games!) and store the current year's receipts away until the following year starts and I have all my data nice and tidy then get rid of them.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, the above has become too much of a hassle. I know I could just use my debit card and get a nice itemized list of what I've spent but I've just opted to keep receipts for certain things (basically electronics) or things where I'd find the data interesting later on. God, I'd go as far to itemize things like the food I would buy for lunch at work - I literally had those receipts coming out of my nose. I know I have no life but even in those circumstances I just can't justify keeping stuff that inane around anymore.

However, I guess the point I'm trying to make is there is something about collecting and sorting data that I love. It's kind of like solving a puzzle or something. I wager that sounds pretty sad.

Whether spending cash, debit card, or credit card, at one point - usually around the time I get my bank or credit card statement for the month - I will chronicle my expenditures for the month. I use it as an excuse to listen to music that I have not even played for myself before, or play the radio or TV in the background. Doing a little household accounting actually helps me sort my thoughts, besides my finances. Meditating by bookkeeping, the world we live in these days *cough* Using a spreadsheet that can automatically calculate totals also helps speed things up.

Especially those expenditures I used a debit or credit card for, because you really should not trust someone else to keep track of things for you - either they make an honest mistake, or they may deliberately deceive you to scam a few extra bucks off of you - namely with interest charges you were not aware of when you signed up for the account, or that may have been recently amended into their policies. It really is one's own responsibility to keep track of one's own livelihood. It also helps me take a look back at how I have been spending money lately, and eliminate unnecessary expenditures in the near and immediate future.

Really, you are doing yourself a favor.

However, I stopped using debit card recently. If there is a theft of your debit card or related information needed to use it, it is harder to regain from ID theft via debit card, than it is to regain from ID theft of one's credit card. Also, when purchasing from retail, I tend to pay credit more often than cash, seeing as how stores seem to be more willing to provide a refund, when they do not get the cold hard cash in their hot little hands. I have found that cash is a sure fire way to end up with a worthless gift card, if you ever need to do a return. If I return one thing to your store, chances are I do not want anything else from your store either - in which case, a gift card is not much recompense at all. I only pay cash if I am certain I will not need to do a return. One negative of using a credit card though, is that the IRS does monitor credit card expenses, and you are more likely to get audited, if they have data that makes it look like you are spending beyond your means.

I actually got myself a job by "Bragging" about how well I keep tabs on my personal expenditures. "How can you demonstrate that you are organized and are good with money?" "Let me show you how I do bookkeeping for myself!"

It is a valuable life skill. So long as we still have a functioning monetary economy, anyway.

I have direct deposit and use my debit card for everything, so I never need to enter a bank or use an ATM. I check the spreadsheet I maintain of my register against my bank account when I get paid every two weeks, and throw out receipts after I confirm that they clear for the correct amount. I'm not really able to itemize on my taxes, so the receipts serve little purpose after that point.

I'm probably in the minority here but I just throw out receipts and I don't balance my checkbook at all.  Maybe I'm just fortunate enough to not have to because I don't live from paycheck to paycheck, but it's such a waste of time.  I have my paycheck setup on auto deposit and I have every regular bill setup to auto-pay.  It's easy being single, too, because I know what I spend and don't have to worry about anyone else.

One of the biggest gripes I have lately is peoples' reliance on checks.  I have not written a single check in the almost 20 years I've had a bank account.  It's 2011.  Use or accept an electronic form of payment.  There are still places that don't accept credit/debit and only accept cash or checks, which is absurd.  Actually, that might not be totally true.  I went to the bank and had them write a bursar's check for my down payment on my new car.

If you're living paycheck to paycheck I can totally understand using checks to be able to bank on that 3 day deal, but really what else is the point of writing checks?  I don't even have a checkbook anymore.

I don't live from paycheck to paycheck either - I've always been sure to maintain a "nest egg" so that surprises don't catch me off guard. That doesn't make checkbook balancing a worthless endeavor, though - banks do still make mistakes. I pay my electric bill via check because the expense of a stamp is much less than the fee my power company adds to process an online payment. Either my bank or theirs transacted the incorrect amount, though. It was only a matter of pennies, but I couldn't have caught the error if I didn't balance my transactions myself.