Singing Loudly

I admit that I'm not diligent in checking my receipts to what I'm charged with my credit card. I know that it's wise to check but I don't like to keep those receipts around and wait to check. It's too much work for me, so I don't do it. Does this mean I'm getting ripped off? Possibly... I just needed a smart, easy way to check and along comes a good way.

Boing Boing (referencing another blog) points out that you can use a checksum method. Say you buy a meal for 10.00 at your local restaurant and you want to leave them a 2 dollar tip (20%). You could leave them 12.00 which you can't really check without the receipt. Or you could leave them 12.03 which is easy to check. All you've got to do is add the dollar sums together and add that number to the cents:

1+2=3. Put that three in the cents column and you'll know if you've been cheated.

Now if you have a really expensive meal then I would advice just adding the last two dollar numbers. For instance, say you bought a meal for a group of friends for 150.00. You want to leave 30.00 for a tip. It'll be 180.00 total. Put it as 180.08 as the total:

180 becomes 8+0=8.

That sounds good to me.