tracking…
I track so very many things…it is second nature to me. I know I’m not alone in this, and that’s why I started An Exacting Life!
Here is a list of all the things I track on a regular basis. There might even be more that are subconscious 🙂
- All the money I spend, budget versus actual, and progress toward savings goals
- Savings from coupons and rewards cards
- All the books I read
- All the movies I watch
- All the concerts I attend (I have a life-list of all the concerts I’ve ever seen)
- Songs played on iTunes (lots of stats from SuperAnalyzer software)
- Daily food and exercise (lots of stats from DietPower software)
- Gas mileage for car
In addition, I have some substantial ongoing lists:
- All the clothes I own
- All the groceries I’ve bought this year (will stop with just one sample year!)
- All the websites I’m registered with
- Wish list of music albums I want to buy
- Wish list of movies I want to see
On the other hand, I don’t track who sends me Christmas greetings and who doesn’t, how many people notice my birthday on Facebook, the progress of my garden, or the weather!
About 10 years ago, for a long-distance move, I did a complete home inventory, which is begging to be updated: I guess I have my next project cut out for me!
What do you track? Any unusual inventories?
An Exacting Life 
Wow, I’m impressed. The only thing I really track, other than spending/budget stuff, is our books and cds. The book list is grossly out of date though. I should add an update to my list of things to do.
I finished The Elegance of the Hedgehog yesterday. Definitely glad I took your “highly recommend” advice. 🙂
Sooo glad you liked the book!
i love to track too – but sometimes I don’t have ideal systems – like with groceries. I was marking up all my spends, with a category split (but that was no use in price comparisons between stores, so now I have frequent use items listed in my phone for a quick comparison). But then my grocery spend is not at all where I leak money, so a month+ ago I went back to itemised spending (which is annoying cause $$ in bank and salary-$$ spent is never quite perfect and I HATE that!). But that being said, I save for all my bills, and save otherwise, so I start to wonder why I bother with stressing myself out with all the above tracking. I know how to handle a $700 bill due in a few weeks (if it’s not been budgetted for like house bills – this was dentist), and I know how to stop spending to pay it without debt. (Sorry, sharing my pep talk in public!)
I HAVE to keep my movie ticket stubs, but toss them annually. I used to list videos/dvds and put in my wallet, but then I got Quickflix and listed them there, and then, really, ran out of content (cause I didn’t actively add to it anymore), so I did with out the subscription, and can visit one of three video stores in my block and use their ads as my prompt if I’m without books or TV. Books I list (from blog-spiriation) and have a paper list, as well as on the library’s website (which has a glitch, but we’ve worked out a work around). I try to track exercise/long walks in runkeeper, more so I know how far I’ve walked etc. OK I’ll stop rambling!
Hey, that’s quite a lot of tracking! I trust myself not to overspend too, but I like to check how much my household bills have changed from year to year and things like that. I am setting up an account to track my books read over at goodreads.com.