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The $6 notebook a grocery cashier in Akron gave me fixed my whole budget
Last month I was at a Save A Lot on Arlington St and my card got declined over $4. Not fun. The cashier, an older lady named Deb, pulled a little spiral notebook out of her apron and said "honey I write down every dime before I put it in my cart, not after." She flipped through it and every page had a running total written at the bottom from the store entrance to the register. I started doing the same thing with a 99 cent notebook and my grocery bill dropped from $140 a week to about $85. My little column of numbers at the bottom of each page feels dumb but it works better than any app I tried. Has anyone else gone back to paper for tracking?
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the_laura2d ago
Honestly the notebook didn't fix anything, Deb did. Having someone stand there and make you feel less bad about a declined card is what changed your mood, and the notebook just rode along for the ride. The math part is easy to copy, but the real trick is slowing down at the door instead of the register, and an app can do that fine if you actually open it before you shop. Tbh the paper thing sounds nice but it's not magic, you could've done the same running total in your phone's notes app for free. My guess is you'd have dropped that bill no matter what you wrote on, because the wake up call was the decline, not the 99 cent spiral.
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