Saturday, September 16, 2006

Tracking receipts - is it really necessary

I was about to write a post on my method and technique for tracking receipts - many of you know I'm a quicken nut and try to track all expenditures in Quicken.

However, a more important question arose, just before composing the posting for a third time (blame blogger's challenges with storing drafts for that the multiple efforts):

Should I really be saving all of these receipts?

I save virtually all family reciepts - however, in general, only receipts for items that have been charged to a credit card or were for larger cash purchases that we might need to return.

Is it really necessary? I have grocery receipts that are a few years old.

What do you think? Which receipts are worth saving? Which would you regret throwing out?

Have a great weekend,

makingourway

3 comments:

Denise Mall said...

In my files I keep receipts for big ticket items in with their warranty and maintence info you get at time of purchase.

I keep anything that relates to a line on my tax return or one of our companies for 7 years, the rest I shred.

I also use Quicken. Although, except for warranty files mentioned above I have rid myself of the paper nightmare. I now scan all documents onto PDF. My little digital file cabinets. Buring to 2 cd's in 2 locations, in case one goes bad, I can make another and always have 2.

Foobarista said...

We save receipts that could possibly have tax usefulness. We don't save hardcopy bills or bank statements - those are either scanned or tossed once we've confirmed they've been settled.

We're allergic to clutter and have always lived in small houses, so we don't keep anything we don't have to.

2million said...

I have just gotten in the habit of saving every receipt. There have been too many times where I am kicking myself because I decided I would never need a particular receipt (like a grocery receipt) and come to find out I need it for any number of reasons (taxes, medical reimbursement, price shopping comparisions, etc).

Interesting though - I have never realy considered scanning stuff in - do people really find that a good use of time? Without really knowing how much time it takes I would have to think that its alot of time to scan all the receipts in to save at most a shoebox worth of space each year. Am I missing something?