How Long To Keep Bills And Statements
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.
Posted: 1 October, 2009 in Tips/Tricks/Hacks.
Comments
Comment from girlrobot
Posted: October 1, 2009 at 11:51 am
Believe me, I try to go paperless when I can but I had a huge amount of medical bills this year and a lot of my work stuff does not have electronic options :(
Comment from Hakushaku
Posted: October 1, 2009 at 12:14 pm
Oh sure, blame it on the scurvy!
Comment from Hakushaku
Posted: October 1, 2009 at 9:31 am
You still get paper bills? What is this, the 90’s?
Tree murderer!