...for those of you who have your shit together, and even those of you who don't. (Who the hell am I to discriminate?) I would love a wide variety of responses. Please chime in.
1.) How long do you keep your bank statements? How about your 401k statements and the like?
2.) How long do you keep (or *do* you keep) your receipts/stubs from paid bills?
3.) Do you keep the "do not pay this" statements you get from companies whom you pay by automatic checking account debit?
4.) Tax stuff. Seriously, can you throw out 1999 and before?
5.) Do you keep coupons? Do you then ever use those coupons before they expire?
6.) Do you ever keep things like credit card offers, offers for super-discounted magazine subscriptions, invitations to continuing ed courses, or solicitations for charity, etc etc because you want to think about them? Or does it all go straight into the recycling except for the stuff you know *immediately* on first look that you do want?
Obviously, I am thinking I need to use my shredder more and my fabulous shoebox filing system less, but I need guidance about how to do that reasonably and reassurance that no one will ever ask me to produce my Sprint bill from March 2006 or the like.
Gracias.
xoxo
8 comments:
The IRS says 7 years, so I keep all stuff related to my tax returns for at least that long. (Bank statements & 401k statements & paid bills of both the regular and auomated payment kind included). I actually keep some of 'em longer than that, since some things, like the cost basis of your house when you sell it and want to dodge as much capital gains as possible is going to go back as long as you've owned it. (Which is to say, if you've spent money on home improvements, don't lose the receipts and/or the record of how much you paid for it).
Coupons, however, as well as credit card offers, magazine subscriptions, and all the rest of that junk mail, I toss out the day I get 'em.
So: 7 years on everything tax-related, and then selected items for longer if they have to do with money spent on the house. Which is to say, all my cable bills, verizon bills, etc. etc. go in the trash when they turn 7, and the bank statements, W-2's, and a few other selected financial records related to the house or anything else that might be important, get saved as long as I have room to save them.
I'd tell you what to do with auto service records, too, but I know you've solved that one already.
Ha! In the big summer shredfest of '09, D shredded bank statements, paid bills, pay stubs (from when I used to get paper ones), etc that were way younger than that, *so I guess I am screwed!* (But Judge Judy was just yelling at someone in her TV court yesterday that you can get a duplicate bank statement for any account at any time, even ones that have been closed, so I guess that nice lady from Eastern Bank who keeps leaving me voicemails asking me what she can do for me could probably help me out.)
What do my verizon or directv bills have to do with my taxes? I don't understand. Oh, well.
Verizon owns the gummint, don't they?
I used to be much more particular about keeping coupons, and I should again, to take the edge off premature retirement. But it's only worth doing if a) you use them for b) stuff you want c) will actually use and d) are prepared to organise. I just used a couple of coupons for Annie's Mac and Cheese items at Whole Paycheck. Too late did I realise that the pasta is shaped like characters from "Arthur." I'd feel like a cannibal if so many of them didn't resemble mutant rabbits.
Reviving this habit will be an uphill struggle.
Okay, just to stop myself from hyperventilating, I looked up what Suze Orman says.
My friend Suze says I can throw away bills and bank statements after a year, unless I am using them for tax deduction purposes, in which I should keep them for three years. Suze says in fact you only need to keep your tax stuff for three years, because that's the limit for how long the IRS can audit you for no reason. (If you omit 25% of your gross income, that goes up to six years, and if you just don't file, no statute of limitations.)
I refuse to believe my third-favorite lesbian would steer me wrong.
I try to remember to use my CVS extrabucks in a timely fashion, because they add up to a lot. I think I got $7.50 last time.
But all those other coupons on the end of my CVS tape are hopeless. Like I had one I found in my purse today for $1 off two Softsoaps, which I could totally have used, except it expired 8 days ago.
I keep the bills, actually, cuz it takes too much effort to sort out the files. I have hanging folders (Penda-Flex brand, I think) in my desk drawers, and I toss all the statements and bills and etc. in their own manila file folders every month. (e.g. my hanging file for "Bank Accounts" has a folder for each account in it, and my "Cars" file has a folder for each car, etc.). At the end of the year, I just take all the manila folders out, and put them in a pile in a box labeled with that number year. After 7, they're gone. The tax-relevant stuff I already pull out when preparing my taxes, and those get put in a special pile, so they're already separate. Those I've kept since the dawn of time, since it's a small amount of stuff. (One or two w-2's, yearly bank statement summaries, etc.) I could easily do as Suze suggests and toss the regular stuff sooner, but I have the room, so I'm too lazy to do it sooner. The key is not having to spend time thinking about it once its filed. Once you have to start pawing through a stack and deciding, then you're already sunk.
So you're telling me that my newest plan to go back through my most recent shoeboxes and separate out the bank statements from the bills, etc, and put them all in their own little folders in chronological order would be a waste of my energy at this point? :-)
Oh, you are just looking for a reason not to, aren't you.
I'd recommend plumbing the paperwork depths for the W-2's, annual bank statements (interest earned, interest paid, etc.) and anything else that gets cited on a tax return. (Receipts for charitable contributions, excise tax and property tax bills, etc.). Then, you can hold a giant winter-warming bonfire in the back yard to celebrate the demise of the rest. (If you carry a hot dog and a stick in your back pocket, if the fire department wants to ding you about a lack of a burn permit, you just tell them that it's a COOKING fire).
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