I was intrigued by a book review in the weekly magazine The Economist, since the book in question delivers the same message that I have been telling my clients: spend your money on experiences, not things. According to “Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending”, by Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton, behavioral research indicates that the excitement brought on by material purchases wears off quickly. A much better strategy, the review states, is “to spend money on experiences, like interesting trips, unique meals, or even going…
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The last time I wrote about receipts was last year in “Making Sense of Receipts.” In that post, I talked about how to track and analyze your spending, as this was what my clients were saying was the reason why they were accumulating receipts. Since then, I have continued to encounter stacks and stacks of receipts at my clients’ homes, some of them years old. These clients haven’t claimed they were saving them for tracking. They were saving them because they…
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What do you do with your receipts after you bring them home? Several of my clients save them — piles and piles of them — so that they can analyze their spending patterns and better understand where their money goes. That’s a worthwhile endeavor. Unfortunately, saving them in piles does not shed any light on your spending patterns. It just creates clutter and causes you stress. It also makes it difficult to find an important receipt when you need it.
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