Impulse buying is a thing, and we’re all guilty of it from time to time. Sometimes, if you’re feeling a little down, it feels good to place an order for that little thing you’ve been meaning to buy, but never quite got around to picking up. Or maybe you see a deal for something you’ve been eyeing and figure, “Eh, now’s as good a time as any.”
There are plenty of services you can use to track your credit card spending, what’s coming in and out of your bank account, and how much your investments are plummeting and likely unable to support your shopping habits. You can even sign up to receive daily notifications of your bank account balance(or spending alerts for your credit card) to help you keep tabs on the money you’re shoveling out of your savings.
You can also just go straight to the source. Plenty of online retailers offer different ways for you to track everything you’ve purchased over a particular length of time. It can be a useful wake-up call to help you admit that, yes, you’re an Amazon addict, you’re too easily triggered by Steam sales, or you’re single-handedly funding the App Store.
Amazon
Say what you will about Amazon, but the online retail giant makes it incredibly easy to view everything you’ve purchased—well, ever. Pull up your order history, where you can view recent and upcoming purchases, search for previous purchases, or just view everything you bought over any year you’ve been an Amazon user.
But that’s not all. You can also create a customized order history report to see everything you purchased between two specific dates, as well as any refunds or returns you made in that time period. Since the information all dumps out as a .CSV file, you’re just a few formulas away from figuring out how much you’re spent in a year (so far).