Shred It. Now.

Just went through months and months of old receipts and documents, shredding the living daylights out of them.  They were clogging up my file drawer, and I hadn't even looked at them in months and months, so it was time to go.

Last year, I resolved to keep every receipt, catalog it, sort it, record it, track where every penny went.  Well...it sort of worked.  It definitely kept me conscious of where I was spending money (food, eating out), but not to the T.  It gave me rough ideas of where things were coming in and going out, but I found things like Mint.com and Bank of America's "My Portfolio" to be more helpful for categorization and aggregation.  The receipts ended up being a nuisance - trying to scan them, etc. - only to end up with them sitting in piles in drawers, useless.  Since all card transactions end up online anyways, I think maybe this year, I'll stick to only keeping receipts for cash transactions.

There's always the risk that you'll get charged incorrectly, whether accidentally (cashier punches it wrong), or you could get defrauded.  In the first case, if you either watch the cashier, or double check the receipt before you sign it, you should be in pretty good shape.  In the second case, the bank will probably (hopefully?) take your side and help you dispute the charge.

Of course the other idea is to still keep receipts, but instead of hanging onto them for a year, just set aside a few minutes each week to make sure all the charges posted correctly, and then get rid of them.

In any event, glad mine are all gone.

Related Posts by Categories