Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Max has been tracking all of his purchases and consumption for the past 5 years in incredible detail - right down to the kind of fruit or bread. He said combing through receipts has become somewhat of an addiction. After a while he felt like the data didn't mean anything and wasn't integrated into his life, so he started making visual charts for his body, garden, and other systems in his life.
http://vimeo.com/groups/17842/videos/15884430

Thanks for sharing this. I'm going t watch some of them tomorrow.

I've kept all receipts for about the same amount if time (5 years) but I don't have time to catalog or even simply scan it. It's turning into a hoarding situation, so I should probably stop. I don't think I'll ever care what kind of bread I ate on a particular day 3 years ago.

I'm just not organized enough for this kind of exercise. I feel that I'm pretty frugal, but can pretty well tabulate what I'm spending/saving in my head. When lunch is comprised of ramen noodles and dinner is tuna fish sandwiches it's not hard to figure where you're at. I obviously budget myself, but not to the point of keeping receipts for every purchase past the point of tabulation.

I use credit cards for almost everything, so it's actually pretty easy to let [insert your favorite transaction aggregator here] break it down for me on a high level.
It's actually been a pet peeve of mine that credit card statements don't break down your transaction into the line items (I think some might but the vast majority don't). WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY! What I'd really like is for the merchant to upload an entire receipt to Visa so I don't even have to keep the paper or scan it. Obviously this won't work unless the POS terminal is properly integrated, but most major retailers would be able to do it with little to no overhead.
Of course, it's scary to let Visa know exactly what I'm buying. That doesn't mean I wouldn't like the convenience assuming my information could be properly protected.

@dragoncar I think this is what you are talking about: http://myquickreceipts.intuit.com/
Not sure how well it works but that's the concept

I've been tracking my income/expenses (ala YMOYL) since Feb 09. I've been tracking the books I've read since Jan 09.

I don't really keep track of my expenses on a per bill basis. I couldn't tell you what my last electric bill was, or what I paid for gas the last time I filled up my car.
Thanks to my credit card and bank statements however, I have a good idea of what my expenses are on a high level. I spend the time I would've spent tracking my expenses on finding new ways to lower my expenses.