My brother laughed at my spreadsheet for tracking groceries, so I stopped using it

I was logging every single food item with prices down to the cent in a color-coded spreadsheet, but my brother said I was wasting time because I never actually changed what I bought based on the data. He told me to just set a weekly cash limit for groceries and stick to it instead. Has anyone else stopped tracking every little line item and found a simpler method that actually worked better?

2 comments

2 Comments

olivers281mo ago

Wait you tracked every single item down to the cent and never changed what you bought?

gavin_kim31mo ago

I mean, "every single item down to the cent" is a wild way to put it. I actually did that one time for a couple months a few years ago, not with groceries but with snacks. I was trying to just see where all my spare change was going, and it turned out I spent like $40 on energy drinks and candy bars alone without even thinking about it. But I never changed what I bought either, I just sort of looked at the totals and felt bad for a bit, then went back to my usual routine. It's a weird habit, idk, some people track to change things and others just track to see the numbers.