I have a confession to make.

I don’t track any sort of financial savings/earnings.

I used to. I used to have this super-complicated budget spreadsheet that I maintained for a couple of years.  I split up every dime we earned and logged it into this spreadsheet by date and category.  I was splitting up every receipt into about ten different categories… and calculating tax for each one. It was super-cool and also a lot of work.  The reason I quit doing it is that I kept falling behind.  I was still doing it when I started couponing, and splitting up those receipts became absolutely impossible. I mean, I’d have a receipt that said that I paid $46.23.  Then I would have to remember that I was getting $35 in rebates, $2 in Register Rewards and I paid using a gift card that I had earned from the previous month’s rebates, so my out-of-pocket was sort of zero, but sort of $7.23.  Then I would have twelve different items in that order, and how could I easily say what each one really cost?

I’ve thought for a long time about how I could come up with any sort of useful statistics about this hobby. I’ve tried using several of the spreadsheets that other deal bloggers use.  None of them make sense for my particular situation–namely, I don’t buy this stuff just for myself. I am still planning on doing my yard sales this year.  Most of the time, I don’t even know when I bring something home if I’ll keep it or if I’ll sell it or give it away.  Plus, I buy a lot of stuff that would artificially  inflate my numbers.  For example, the regular price on a diabetes monitor is like $80.  My receipts will tell me that I have saved $129.98 or something silly, when in fact, I haven’t really saved anything.  I wouldn’t buy that item if it didn’t give me some sort of special benefit, and I’d never pay that much for one even if I did buy one.

And yet, I think I’m missing out by not tracking more of my expenditures and incomes.  If you don’t have a goal or a way of measuring a goal, then you’re not going to give it everything you’ve got, right? So, my new goal is to break even, so to speak.  My plan is pretty simple–I want the things that I buy (groceries, toiletries, household supplies, etc) for both myself and for the purpose of reselling to balance out against the income that I generate.  I’m going to count most things that I would buy at a drugstore or Wal-Mart or grocery store, excluding say, appliances or electronics or car maintenance supplies  or  maybe gifts.  For drustore shopping, I will count out of pocket expenses only–thus increasing the likelihood that I will actually keep up with this.  The Register Rewards and Extra Care Bucks will be discounted from the calculations–I mean, I’ll use them in future transactions, thereby bringing the cost down, so it evens out in the end.  Rebates I will add back into my pool of available money as income, just because it will be simpler that way.  Other income will include things like online offers, credit card dividends, yard sales, eBay sales, freelance work, etc.

This method clearly wouldn’t work for someone dedicated to a firm monthly budget, or who uses the envelope system.  In our house, though, it’s just not as set in stone that we will spend a certain amount on groceries in one week or month anymore.  We used to have $300 as our food budget, but that was before coupons.

I’ll be honest with you. I have no idea if this will work, if it’s far from obtainable or if it’s way too easy.  Judging from the last working budget that we had (before couponing), this should be quite easy to accomplish, and I’ll need to adjust it to make it more challenging.  I hope!   If that happens, I’ll add categories of spendings to be included (say, restaurants) in order to make it a little more difficult.  In a way, I’d rather fail the challenge than make it too easy–at least that way, I’d still be striving to meet my goal.

I think that the benefits of this method will be that it will inspire me to work harder to both save more and earn more, and it will also allow me to track my shopping trips quickly and with a minimum of fuss.  It also makes sense, in a way, to consider all of my income-earning activities, as a stay-at-home-mom, as part of my household budget.  At the end of the day, money in and money out data should be more useful than a somewhat arbitrary number representing my savings.

I’m going to try this for a month or two and then re-evaluate, and fine-tune the goals then.  I’ll post my progress as I go.