Friday, April 9, 2010

Thought Provoking Thursday

Checking out your receipts after you shop can end up saving you a lot more in the long run!

OK, confession time, I'm addicted to searching my receipts to find our how much I've spent vs. how much I've saved... before I even tuck my receipt into my wallet! I need to know my numbers right away!

Here are a few of my personal money saving strategies for reading receipts:

1. Before I leave the store, I review the number of coupons that I handed to my cashier, against how many coupons have been redeemed on my receipt. If the numbers don't match up (and it would be a significant savings), I can pay a visit to the Customer Service desk to get the appropriate savings straightened out.

2. I use my receipts as a guide to keeping me on target for my weekly budget. I keep all of my weekly receipts in my wallet to help remind me how much I've already spent in any given week.

3. I add a little annotation to the top of my receipts that I am eligible to receive a rebate for, immediately when I get home... I go out on a pretty creative limb, and I write REBATE on bold letters. That way I am far more likely to get cash back for my purchases!

4. I save all of my receipts (grocery and non-grocery alike) for any given month, in a large binder clip. If I happen to need to return an item, I can easily get my hands on the receipt that I need!

What do YOU do with your receipts?

9 comments:

Julie

I always check my receipt before leaving the store. Besides checking to see if all my coupons scanned, I look for rewards points that I should have earned. One of my stores started doing a promotion where if you buy a certain number of items, the price drops, so I check that, too.
I store my receipts in me binder until I get home to record them. Then I store them in a folder for a long time (until I'm ready to tackle cleaning them out) just in case I come across a rebate for something I've already purchased.

Coley

I am definitely an addicted receipt checker too! I go thru a similar mental walk thru, comparing what I have to what I should have got, making sure any coupons I used came off and any OYNO's or rewards I was expecting have printed. They then go into a certain pocket of my purse until I have time to enter them into my spending tracker on my computer. As they are put into the computer every 1-2 weeks, I sort them into either a montly envelope or into a specific rebate envelope. I keep my rebate envelopes in the front of my binder in a plastic pencil pouch so everytime I open the binder I'm reminded of them in the store.

Jen@Scrapingirl

I have been slipping them into a ziploc bag that magneted to the fridge. Is "magneted" even a word? Oh well. :) I am keeping track this year, as I decided to drop our grocery budget per month. I wanna see how I do, and if I can do it well, it will be dropped again next year.

Paula Wethington

I log them into my Quicken computer program. When I do the entries, I input the total amounts and also the coupon and rebate values as separate line items. That way I can tell how much I "saved" when I run the grocery reports.

Carrie

I check 'em out in the store, and if they look right, when I get home...

I PITCH 'EM!!!!!

(If there's a rebate, I immediately fill it out and mail it. Otherwise, to the trash can!)

Carrie

(That is the beauty of having a cash grocery budget. I don't need my receipts to keep me on track).

Laura Webber

Oh cash... the 'other' option. I heart responsibly using plastic!

Stefanie

I have realized before that the number of coupons I gave to the cashier do not match up w/the number of coupons on the receipt but how do you prove that to Customer Service?
I do self checkout (when possible) at Meijer so I can do my own coupons but it's usually turns into some sort of trouble and then at my Kroger the worker takes the coupons and scans them on their computer (even at self checkout) which I feel even less in control of that! (control issues I KNOW!) :)
Stefanie

Laura Webber

Most often, the Customer Service reps just believe me! But, if necessary, the rep can go to my machine (U-scan) and pull out all of the coupons and verify.

I hate U-scan at Kroger- for exactly the same reasons! I watch my screen for the coupons being scanned so I can say "oh, I had 4 of those coupons, two must have stuck together." Usually that solves any problems!