We never been ones for saving receipts and tracking our spending, but his year, out of sheer curiosity we decided to become diligent in tracking every thing we bought and saved. Its now September and we have discovered that its well worth the work to track and save receipts. Here are two examples.

In February we bought a couple of PUR water filters from Wal-Mart. Last year we bought several filter refills from BJ's wholesale club that offered coupons which made them a great deal. In July, one of the filter housing sprung a leak but it wasn't a big deal because we had a back-up. When the second one broke the same way, we were dumb struck. We had eight refills in our stash but now no filter housing. Wal-mart had a 90 day refund policy which left us stuck without a refund. So I called PUR and they sent us a new housing unit for free. I mentioned that we never had problems before and had a large supply of filters to use up.

In June we bought seven Juniper plants for about $75.00 total. Two of the plants did not make it and the store offers a guarantee on the plants. In the past we would never save the receipts and would have written off the loss. However, this time we saved our receipts and we were able to either get a refund or new plants to replace the bad ones.

In the past, we would have never been able to recoup our losses. Since we started tracking our spending, we have documentation at our fingertips. DH put together a simple notebook. One page was dedicated to our frequently used stores and one page for miscellaneous. Every time we go shopping, we enter the amounts in the notebook. We made out 12 envelopes, one for each month and placed the receipts in them. When we need to trace back a purchase, we had our notebook to refer to. When your searching through receipts, its easier to look through one months worth rather than an entire stack. Our household file is sorted by month and at the end of each month, we put that months envelope worth of receipts in the appropriate folder.

Its a great method to recoup your losses and discover where your money goes.

 You are righ, Toni, it IS worth the work invovled.  A couple of weeks ago or so I spoke at a homeschool convention on personal finances.  Someone in the audience stated that saving even $10 is a big deal.  That is SO true.  Even 50 cents is a big deal.

 A little bit and a little bit and little bit add up to a lotta bit.

 Great receipt system you have there.  Will have to recommend that to those I work with

That's what we call a good and effective money manage management. Money management means having a firm awareness of the future value of small amounts of Money. By adding these small amounts to the power of compound interest returns, you can significantly influence your future wealth.

toni B you gave me a good way to keep reciets with the purchuse and the with the p.c code, I don't understand why wa-mart did that to you when usally they are pretty good and refund and to exchanges guess that was then but its now they should have honored that in the first places guess thier policy is maybe better I have not been back to walmart in a long time maybe talk to the mangament next time.

A Follow-up to the receipt and return situation. Wal-Mart has a policy that is posted, no refunds after 90 days and they did not have the correct housing unit in stock. I ended up calling the PUR company and explained our situation. Told them we like PUR filter systems and had several filter replacements. They sent us a new housing unit for FREE. Very pleased with the outcome and the new housing unit works great.