For awhile now, I kept one of these:

And every time I got a bill or an important document, I would file it away in there. I had labels for tax, phone, credit cards, insurance, car, etc. After awhile my box was really full. Little did I know that half of the papers I could have just thrown away! Here’s a little handy guide on what papers you need to keep and for how long.

For all monthly bills – you can shred them after you verify you have been charged the correct amount and your payment has been processed. but keep utility bills if you need to for your taxes

tax documents – you need to keep the hard copies for 7 yrs. after that you can shred it but always keep an electronic copy

bank and investment statements – Keep the quarterly ones until you get the year end statements. Keep the year end ones for 6 years

My filing box also contains other important documents like social security card, passport, and birth certificate etc. Since boyrobot and I have been traveling a lot, we’ve scanned in copies of our passport and emailed it to ourselves so we always have access to it. It’s probably a good idea to do this with other important documents.