One of the perks of using credit cards instead of cash is that you don’t have to worry about tracking every transaction or keeping every receipt, right? After all your purchases will all be nicely laid out for you to review in your credit card statement, and they’ll be there automatically! Hold on though. Don’t toss out those credit card purchase receipts just yet. It’s probably a good idea to hold onto them.

The Benefit of Automatic Record Keeping

Look. It’s great that you can get your monthly credit card statement or go online to view your recent credit card transactions. That automatic record keeping is a great thing. But it’s not a great thing because it means you don’t have to do any of the work or record keeping yourself anymore. It’s great because it gives you something to check your own records against (unlike if you only use cash).

Sure, you might have a bank balance and bank statement to compare your cash transactions to, but not everyone will. Sometimes cash never touches the bank account (such as if someone repays a personal loan with cash, you’re given cash as a gift, or you simply cash your paycheque instead of having it deposited in your account). It’s not a sure thing. When you use a credit card though, every single transaction will show up in that statement. That’s one of the biggest perks of using credit cards, especially when you already have enough money to pay for the purchases in full.

Then Why Keep Credit Card Receipts?

It might feel like a waste of time and space to keep receipts for all of your credit card transactions, but it’s not. Those receipts can go a long way towards not only keeping your more organized (maybe you really did forget about one of those credit card transactions), but also preventing credit card fraud.

You already know that you should carefully review each credit card statement to look for unusual charges. It’s the best way to detect unauthorised activity (it’s not always in large, obvious amounts). If you notice something strange on your credit card statement you might panic and assume you were a victim of identity theft or credit card fraud. However, if you kept all of your credit card receipts you’d have an easy way to tell — if the charge looks unfamiliar and you don’t have a matching receipt, chances are better that you have something to report to the credit card company.

However, if you find a strange charge but you do have the receipt then at least you know you actually made the purchase. We might not always remember every small purchase we made at the end of a statement period, and receipts act as refreshers to assure us that nothing unsavoury is going on with our accounts.

Keeping your credit card receipts isn’t necessary if all you want is a basic itemized list of your credit card charges. If you’re looking for true peace of mind though, keep them. Keep them all. You never know when you’ll want to verify a shady charge on your account — something you can’t easily do without separate records of your own.