I wanted to control something we never had under control

If you go shopping/supermarket, and buy a lot of things, how do you handle tracking of the total cost? With a calculator, a special app, or just don't care about this at all - just take whatever you want and that's it?

I don’t know if I’m the only one like this, but I hope I’m not 🫣

Usually, when I do grocery shopping, I heavily fail to spend what I initially planned. You take this, and this, and this… it seems like you’re still within budget, but at checkout it’s almost always like — What?! How did it get that much? 🤯

Honestly, that uncertainty annoyed me a lot, especially during periods when I had to limit my grocery trips to certain amounts. If I took more than 5–10 items, I had no idea whether I could take something more. I tried shopping apps and calculator apps, but typing prices is not for a person like me. Typing prices is even more annoying than not knowing the total at checkout. 😁

So for a long time I just got used to shopping with that constant background anxiety. And it’s even worse when you realize that retail environments are designed in a way that makes it hard to keep track. That sounds like a conspiracy theory, but it’s actually true.

I’m curious — how do you handle this?

Do you track spending in real time, or only look at totals after checkout?