Injury Expense Tracker
The large costs take care of themselves — a hospital bill arrives and nobody forgets it. It is the small, scattered ones that disappear, and collectively they are often thousands.
Keep this from the first week. Reconstructing it later produces a shorter list every time.
Medical
- Emergency room or urgent care
- Follow-up appointments, including ones that seemed routine
- Surgery, and any subsequent revision
- Prescriptions, including over-the-counter dressings, antiseptics and pain relief
- Physical or occupational therapy
- Mental health treatment — counselling, therapy, medication
- Imaging, lab work, and specialist referrals
- Anything you were billed for that insurance declined
For each: date, provider, what it was for, amount billed, amount you actually paid.
Track the billed amount and your out-of-pocket amount separately. They are different numbers and both matter — the billed total speaks to the severity of the injury, and your out-of-pocket is what you are actually down.
Travel and access
Small individually, substantial in aggregate over months of appointments.
- Mileage to and from every appointment — note the round-trip distance
- Parking and tolls
- Rideshares or taxis, especially if you could not drive
- Public transport fares
Lost income
- Days or hours missed, with dates
- Whether it was unpaid, or used up paid leave — using up sick leave is a real loss, even though your pay did not change that week
- Shifts, overtime, or contracts you could not take
- If self-employed: work turned away, and jobs that went to someone else
Keep anything from your employer confirming absences.
Help you had to pay for
The category people most often fail to claim, because it does not feel like an “injury expense.”
- Childcare you would not otherwise have needed
- Cleaning, yard work, or home maintenance you could not do
- Meal delivery while you could not cook or shop
- Help with driving
Property
- Clothing, glasses, phone, or a bicycle damaged in the incident
- Keep the damaged items. Do not throw them out — they are evidence as well as a cost.
Things to record that are not receipts
These carry weight and leave no paper trail unless you create one:
- Days you could not work but did anyway, and what that cost you
- Sleep disruption, nightmares
- Activities you stopped — walking a route, exercising, visiting people with dogs
- A child’s changed behaviour
- Anniversaries of the incident, if they affect you
Note them with dates as they happen. Written contemporaneously they are evidence. Recalled in a deposition eighteen months later they are an assertion.
How to keep it
One folder, physical or digital, and a running list with columns for date, category, description, billed, and paid. A spreadsheet is ideal; a notebook is fine. What matters is that it is contemporaneous and complete.
Do not hand this to the other side’s insurer unprompted. It is your working record. What gets disclosed, and when, is a decision to make deliberately.
Relevant context: what actually drives the value of a claim, and why an early offer is usually priced short.