RPF0580-Useful_Tools_to_Track_Your_Shopping_Cart_Totals_When_Youre_In_The_Store
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00:00:31.000 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,
00:00:34.000 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while
00:00:38.280 | building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. My name is Joshua, and today
00:00:42.060 | we tackle one of those seemingly mundane topics that I think makes a big difference in our
00:00:50.320 | daily lives. And it's simply this. How do you track when you're out shopping? How do
00:00:55.080 | you track the cost of the merchandise that you're accumulating in your shopping cart,
00:01:02.580 | or shopping basket, or shopping bag, as the case may be? This is one area where online
00:01:10.720 | shopping just beats the pants off of in-person shopping. Because in online shopping, as you
00:01:15.280 | click "add to cart" on your online grocery store, you can see that total add up. And
00:01:26.040 | then when you're done, you can open that cart up and you can delete, you can save for
00:01:30.360 | later, you can adjust the quantities, and that makes it really easy to stick within
00:01:33.620 | your budget. After all, if you have $367 in your checking account and you're shopping
00:01:38.600 | in that online cart and you see that your tax and shipping is going to bring you to
00:01:41.840 | $374, then of course you have to change and reduce the quantities. But this is a little
00:01:48.520 | bit harder in person. Because in person it's hard to keep track of all the different things
00:01:52.860 | that you are adding into your cart. Now depending on where you're shopping, this may or may
00:01:56.920 | not change your, it may be easier in some circumstances than it is in others. I find
00:02:02.800 | it really tough to keep track of things when I'm shopping in two particular places. A
00:02:07.000 | store where I'm accumulating lots of items, or a store where I'm accumulating items
00:02:11.760 | of hugely varying values. So the grocery store is the biggest challenge for me, where you're
00:02:19.520 | kind of putting usually dozens and dozens of items in a cart. And it's just hard to
00:02:23.880 | keep track of it. Is it going to be a $282 shopping cart, or is it going to be a $350
00:02:29.000 | shopping cart? That makes a big difference. Especially if you are seeking to stick to
00:02:33.660 | a certain amount of money in your budget. One recommendation that I often give, and
00:02:39.600 | that I personally practice, is I never spend digital money when I can spend cash. Which
00:02:44.440 | means I usually have an amount of, I always have an amount of money in my wallet, and
00:02:47.760 | I want to make sure that I don't wind up at the front register embarrassing myself
00:02:52.320 | by not having enough money in my wallet, and then feeling the pressure of all the people
00:02:55.800 | behind me trying to figure out what to do. What do I put back? How do I adjust if I don't
00:03:01.520 | have enough money? Or I wind up overspending, which is unfortunate. So I think this perhaps
00:03:08.840 | is one of those areas where, with the proliferation of digital spending, where most people swipe
00:03:13.000 | a credit card or a debit card when checking out, I think they worry less about it. But
00:03:17.680 | my observation is they shouldn't worry less about it. You really shouldn't. Because,
00:03:22.960 | yes, you might have the money in your checking account, but that's how you wind up overspending.
00:03:27.240 | So I want to give you a couple of very simple suggestions to put in practice that will help
00:03:31.600 | you to make sure that you keep track of your expenditures as you add them up, so that you
00:03:38.040 | can take a moment and think before you're actually at the checkout register, and consider
00:03:44.580 | if you've chosen the right things for you. And those suggestions are, one, very tactile,
00:03:50.280 | and two, is going to be an app. So first, if you don't want to spend any money, and
00:03:54.280 | you just want to have a very simple foolproof system, what I recommend to you is, while
00:03:58.920 | you're shopping, just carry a small index card, a small piece of paper, doesn't matter,
00:04:04.280 | a back of an envelope from your junk mail, and write down a running total of the cart.
00:04:10.240 | I'm pretty good at mental math, better than, I would guess, the majority of people at mental
00:04:16.840 | math. But it's tough to keep math straight in your head when you have a big basket full
00:04:23.160 | of stuff. And so I find that I need to write it down. So often when I'm out shopping, I'll
00:04:28.280 | carry just a very simple sheet of paper, and just write down a simple round number price
00:04:34.560 | of everything that I'm putting into a cart. Most of the time, just the number is sufficient.
00:04:41.400 | So let's say that you're out shopping, and you're getting eggs, and they're three bucks,
00:04:44.360 | you write down three bucks, and then you're getting a carton of milk, and that's $3.50,
00:04:48.240 | I decided to write down four bucks. And I just always round up to the next dollar for
00:04:55.920 | a nice round number, and then I keep a running total. So three plus four is seven, and I
00:05:00.480 | just write down the price and keep a running total there. That works very well, it's very
00:05:04.880 | simple and very quick, and it really helps to get a good understanding of what's in your
00:05:09.880 | shopping basket. Of course, you can do this at any store, but it's most helpful at stores
00:05:14.380 | where you have a lot of things, where you can't remember the particular prices. It's
00:05:18.600 | easy if you have three items, you know one was 30 bucks, one was 40, and one was 50,
00:05:22.680 | that's easy to do. But when you have 100 items, that's a little bit harder. So I will just
00:05:27.000 | simply often carry a sheet of paper and a pencil, and just do some quick, very round
00:05:32.200 | number math problems to keep that running total. Then when I can see it's getting close
00:05:37.940 | to my budget, $100, $200, whatever my budget is, then I can make decisions. The other solution
00:05:44.280 | was recommended to me some months ago by a listener, and I have found this to be a phenomenal
00:05:49.760 | solution, and it's an app. The app is called Solver, S-O-U-L-V-E-R, but it is one of the
00:05:57.520 | most useful apps that I have found, especially related to money and related to finance. I
00:06:03.000 | think most financial apps are wildly oversold with regard to their actual value, but this
00:06:09.360 | app is very useful. I'll describe it to you verbally, and then you can check it out for
00:06:14.000 | yourself and describe to you how I use it. Verbally speaking, it's a spreadsheet app
00:06:23.200 | that collects and collates the data that you enter into the sheet in a very less structured
00:06:29.920 | way. So there are no columns, it just has a couple of very simple functions, and you
00:06:33.880 | can enter text or you can enter numerals. And then the app will discard the text, but
00:06:41.000 | it will use the numerals. And in the text, it actually puts into it, it can do some simple
00:06:48.080 | mathematical functions as you're entering the data in. So I've come to the point where
00:06:52.160 | I use this on most shopping trips. And if you, I recommend you try it out. I've not
00:06:58.280 | reached out to the, I have no connection with the app maker, you just have to buy it in
00:07:01.480 | the store, it's a couple bucks, something like that. Again, it's called Solver, S-O-U-L-V-E-R,
00:07:07.400 | look it up in your app store. But I'll tell you how I use it and how it's so useful. I
00:07:11.760 | use it when I'm out shopping. And so I have here on my screen in front of me, I have the
00:07:16.880 | total from a recent shopping trip that I did at Costco. And as I was out shopping, I was
00:07:23.240 | putting in the name of an item and the price. And so my first line here was I bought a carton
00:07:30.200 | of coffee and $7.99. So I just entered 7.99 coffee. And then I bought some bear spray
00:07:37.280 | and so my next one is 39.99 bear spray. And then over in the right hand column, I have
00:07:42.800 | the right hand column set to give me a running total. And as I'm actually putting in the
00:07:47.520 | data, it will accumulate that running total. But the beautiful thing about it is it's also
00:07:52.360 | extremely easy to put in multiple quantities. So one of my categories here is chips. I bought
00:08:01.920 | some tortilla chips. So those were $4.59, but I bought two bags. So I just wrote chips
00:08:07.080 | 4.59 times two, and it automatically over in the right hand column, it automatically
00:08:14.180 | created the total for me of $9.18 and added that to my total. And so a Costco trip for
00:08:20.880 | me is a good place where this is so useful because I have very small purchases on here,
00:08:26.240 | a pineapple for $2.99. And I have very large purchases on here. In my case, I bought a
00:08:31.160 | mattress for $199.99 and I bought dog food. And so I can look at that and I can do all
00:08:38.000 | kinds of things with that information. I can know that when I'm getting up to checkout,
00:08:42.200 | my total was $477.80. Now that doesn't include tax, but I just mentally round up to tax.
00:08:48.320 | And so I was able to stay under a $500 checkout based upon having this data here. I recommend
00:08:54.000 | this app to you. It is the most useful app I have found for being in a store. And it
00:09:00.600 | really usefully brings in the value of a phone and it makes this semi-smart spreadsheet really
00:09:08.340 | work for you. So give it a shot. You'll have to buy the app to try it. Again, it's called
00:09:13.680 | Solver, S-O-U-L-V-E-R. You have to buy it to try it, but in my opinion, it has been
00:09:18.880 | well worth the money for, again, whatever it is in the app store, $2 or $3, something
00:09:23.720 | like that. Give it a try and give it a try on your next shopping list, because here is
00:09:28.480 | why this is so important. Personal finance, good personal finance is a cumulation of many,
00:09:36.640 | many small things. There is almost never one big thing. That's why these topics that I
00:09:43.120 | share with you are so diverse, but it's an accumulation of many, many small things. And
00:09:48.760 | it's also an accumulation of habits and practices. At the end of the day, you have to control
00:09:53.920 | your expenses. There's no way around it. And that control of expenses for most of us begins
00:10:00.320 | with some simple things that we learn when we're young. Our parents, hopefully, will
00:10:05.680 | teach us how to control our desires and how to plan ahead for our expenses and how to
00:10:10.960 | get a good value on our money so we don't waste our money on some stupid cheap thing.
00:10:15.720 | But then it continues and we learn how to adjust and prioritize our expenses. And there's
00:10:20.480 | good daily practice in the grocery store or in the clothing store that will help you to
00:10:25.120 | keep track of your money and help you to be moderate with your expenses. And then that
00:10:29.080 | simply continues up as your scale grows, as you are engaging in much larger financial
00:10:34.960 | transactions. Frugality doesn't become less important. It just happens on a different
00:10:39.880 | scale where instead of worrying about saving $1.99 by buying three cartons of coffee when
00:10:45.120 | it's on sale, then you're saving tens of thousands of dollars by buying significantly
00:10:50.640 | discounted assets when they're on sale. So these practices and habits need to be built
00:10:55.720 | steadily and you've got to be in control. And unfortunately, most of us get in a real
00:11:00.620 | bind when we're facing pressure. I had an unusual experience recently where I made a
00:11:06.880 | decision, a financial decision, under pressure. And I was checking out somewhere, I made an
00:11:13.320 | offer and I went ahead and bought it. And in hindsight, it was a mistake. And I've tried
00:11:17.680 | and tried to be very insulated about that, but I still succumb to the pressure. And many
00:11:22.240 | of us do, whether it's the pressure at the car dealer, the pressure at the grocery store.
00:11:26.440 | And so one of the most valuable habits you can practice is planning logically, planning
00:11:32.600 | ahead, and then making sure that you're not subject to that pressure, that panicked moment.
00:11:37.320 | And an app like Solver or a simple piece of paper can help you to avoid that when you're
00:11:42.760 | at the grocery store, because you can pull aside when you're not in line, you can look
00:11:47.320 | at your cart, you can know how much money is going in that total cart, you can know
00:11:51.640 | it pretty confidently. And then you can decide before you're facing the pressure if you want
00:11:56.460 | to put something back, or if you want to go ahead and check out. So I hope these two suggestions
00:12:00.560 | are useful for you. And kudos to the to the developers of Solver for coming up with a
00:12:06.480 | really useful app. And thank you to my listener, I don't remember who you are at this point
00:12:10.000 | who recommended it to me. It has been a very useful in my life.