One of my readers, Cynthia From Debt Marathon commented on last Monday in response to my post I'm Drowning in Receipts “…your stack of receipts was outrageous to me!”
I agree wholeheartedly!!!
Then I thought it might be entertaining to share some stats on those receipts with y'all.
This is counting all the receipts I entered into Quicken and Quickbooks, money spent by myself, Mr. A and AJ. This also includes food shopping that AJ did for his job (party in December), and it also includes shopping that I did for my employer (she had me buy gift certificates at a three different stores).
The only expenditures of AJ's that I track are ones that pertain to our finances. For example, he puts gasoline in the car every other week or so and pays for it himself. I track all the miles put onto all our vehicles so that I can determine how much was for business or personal use. That is tracked in a different account, but it is still among the receipts that I entered.
Remember, this is personal and business mixed together. So my monthly report may conflict with these numbers.
For the month of December – there were 104 receipts in all. Can you feel my pain?
By categories:
- 1 Automotive receipt $103.25
- 1 Clothing receipt $54.04
- 1 Haircut $12.00
- 4 business related meals receipts $53.39
- 2 drugstore receipts $20.81
- 4 feedstore receipts $143.34
- 20 gasoline receipts $614.07
- 13 receipts for gifts receipts $491.24 (includes my camera purchase)
- 32 grocery store receipts $1080.84
- 13 hardware store receipts $531.29
- 5 receipts to be reimbursed $135.37
- 8 miscellaneous receipts $138.90
Stores visited (including online purchases):
- 3 visits to Albertsons Grocery
- 8 receipts from Amazon.com
- 1 visit to Autozone
- 9 visits to Bashas Grocery
- 3 receipts Buy.com
- 1 visit to Casual Male
- 3 visits to Family Dollar
- 3 visits to Filiberto's Mexican Food Restaurants
- 3 visits to feedstores
- 2 visits to Food City Grocery
- 11 visits to Fry's Grocery
- 1 visit to Fry's Fuel (while at the Fry's Grocery)
- 1 visit to Great Clips (even though I cut hair, my hubby sometimes can't wait and pays to get his hair cut!)
- 1 visit to Guitar Center
- 1 online livestock item purchase
- 6 visits to Home Depot
- 2 visits to True Value Hardware
- 1 visit to Joann's
- 1 visit to Kohl's
- 1 visit to Love's Gasoline
- 5 visits to Lowe's Home Center
- 19 visits to QT Gasoline
- 2 visits to Safeway Grocery
- 1 visit to Sears
- 2 visits to Smart & Final
- 1 online receipt to tickle.com (hey, free $25 gift card!)
- 2 visits to the United States Postal Services
- 2 visits to Walgreens
- 5 visits to Walmart
- 1 business related meal at Whataburger
- 2 receipts from Winkflash.com
Do you really want to know which stores day by day? Some dates aren't completely accurate as the transactions sometimes don't hit the bank for a couple of days:
12/1/2009
Amazon.com
Bashas
Buy.com
Filiberto's
Fry's
QT
Walgreens
12/2/2009
Fry's
Guitar Center
Walmart
Winkflash Photography
12/3/2009
Fry's
QT
12/4/2009
Fry's
Lowe's
QT
12/5/2009
QT
12/7/2009
Food City
Fry's
Online Livestock Supplier
Lowe's
QT
QT
Walgreens
Wal-Mart
Winkflash Photography
12/8/2009
Albertson
Home Depot
QT
12/9/2009
Fry's
Fry's
Home Depot
QT
Smart & Final
Smart & Final
12/10/2009
Autozone
Bashas
Family Dollar
Family Dollar
Family Dollar
Lowe's
12/12/2009
Casual Male
Filiberto's
Hometown True Value Hardware
Hometown True Value Hardware
QT
Albertson
12/13/2009
Fry's
Fry's
Fry's Fuel
Home Depot
Lowe's
12/14/2009
Bashas
Buy.com
Buy.com
Feedstore
Lowe's
QT
QT
Safeway
12/15/2009
Albertson
Amazon.com
Tickle.com
12/16/2009
QT
12/17/2009
USPS
12/18/2009
Food City
USPS
12/19/2009
JOANN ETC
QT
Whataburger
12/21/2009
Bashas
Bashas
Great Clips
Home Depot
QT
12/22/2009
Fry's
QT
Sears
Walmart
12/23/2009
Bashas
Filiberto's
Love's
12/24/2009
Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Bashas
Feedstore
Kohl's
Walmart
Walmart
12/26/2009
Home Depot
QT
12/28/2009
Amazon.com
Fry's
Home Depot
Feedstore
Safeway
12/29/2009
Amazon.com
12/30/2009
Bashas
QT
QT
12/31/2009
Bashas
QT
If you recall, Mr. A does nearly all of the grocery shopping. I would estimate that maybe 20 of the receipts above were purchased by me. I do most of my purchases online, so Amazon.com and Buy.com were my doing. I also went to Sears to get AJ his SodaStream for Christmas.
How many receipts a month do you have to deal with?
You know, I’ve been thinking about that stack ever since you showed it. Maybe that’s why I find budgeting easier for me than it is for you. We have maybe 5-10 receipts a week and don’t have to itemize between personal and business. We usually have 1-3 during the week and the rest come on the weekend. If I had that many to enter I’d probably find it more of a chore too! Good job keeping up with all of them! Is there any chance you can bundle some of those trips to the store so you don’t have to go as often? I don’t know what QT is, but you seem to go there an awful lot. Maybe they’re business things though so you have to go that often but if you bundled your trips into fewer, you’d have less receipts to enter!
[Reply]
Mrs. Accountability Reply:
February 5th, 2010 at 9:32 pm
Hi Cynthia, I’m glad you’ve kept me in your thoughts. 🙂 Let me just say, if I have the energy and the time to do the grocery shopping, and could get my husband to break his habit of going to the grocery store almost every single day, I would only go once a week!! I already know you spend more money by going every day, but he prefers to shop that way. Also, just to let you know, we can’t really combine any of those trips to QT because it the place were we get gasoline and we fill up our gas tanks each time. I put a minimum of 500 miles a week on my vehicle, and I’m able to go 300 miles on a tank of gas. My husband sometimes drives 100 miles one way for his business. His truck holds more gasoline than mine, but he probably ends up filling up at least twice if not more each week also. I haven’t ever really done the statistics on other months and receipts, December just really overwhelmed me. I guess I could look back through into Quicken and get a count on how many entries for previous months. Anyway, I really appreciate your input and suggestions and thank you for visiting! Mrs. A
[Reply]
Of all the budget categories out there we struggle with groceries the most. I read some good ideas in “America’s Cheapest Family”. I think the thing that would help us the most is creating a menu plan as it describes in that book. It can be hard to stick to though. Sometimes you just don’t feel like eating what you put on the menu 3 weeks ago.
[Reply]