Tracking Coupon Savings in Quicken

Nov
11th
2008

Filed Under Saving
Trackback URL

My wife is a coupon freak.  Each week we buy the Sunday paper and she can barely wait to pull the leaflets of coupons out and scan through them.  An hour each week is spent cutting and clipping, until we have a pile of coupons awaiting a trip to the local grocery store.  She even clips coupons for friends and relatives, and collects coupons from other folks who “don’t need to clip coupons” (aka lazy people, in my opinion).

After the trip to the store, my wife makes me guess how much she saved in coupons.  Some weeks it’s a LOT, other weeks it’s not as much, but I can usually estimate by the size of the smile on her face.  I typically congratulate and thank her for saving the family some money by being frugal with the groceries.

But it recently hit me that while she is saving our family money on items we would buy with or without the coupons, we are not actually saving any money (my fault, not hers).  The $10, $20, or $30 she may save just goes towards some other expenditure and we never “realize” the savings.  I can’t tell you (as evidenced above) exactly how much she has saved us over the years.

So, I’ve decided to create a new category in my Quicken file called “Coupon Savings”.  After each trip to the grocery store, I’ll take the receipt, note the amount saved with coupons, and transfer that amount from our checking account into our savings account at ING.  We’ll be “feeding” our savings account with the coupons savings while feeding the family.

It will take one additional transaction in Quicken, but I’ll then be able to track our coupon savings and boost the amount saved each year.

DK



Comments

Leave a Reply