How much of my household paperwork do I still need to keep?

June 27, 2018 5:24 PM

Relating to past medical, auto, financial, housing, and work documents, how long do I keep this and which of these records do I need to keep? I am comfortable with my filing system and it's organized but I'm just wondering whether I do need to keep all of it, because it's starting to be a lot for me.

You are not my lawyer or financial advisor (YAML, YAMFA) but which of my household paperwork should I keep and for how long?
This was last asked on here over a decade ago; but I'm wondering about additional things and whether people's opinions on this changed?

I'm specifically wondering about:
- Medical/dental/health, RX receipts/records

- payments for utilities, rental insurance & leases at places where I no longer live and or utilities that I have different providers now

- car information (past paid traffic tickets, insurance policies, photos from old car accidents, repairs that were done to them, past car registration/renewals) about cars that I no longer have possession of;

- financial statements (checking/credit, investments, retirement); note that there are 3-5 years available online about I have access to paper copies far beyond that.

- bi-weekly pay stubs and W2s from past jobs (I'm leaning towards this forever for the latter);

- student loan statements from numerous lenders; some of the loans are fully paid off?

Anything else that I may have missed and specificity (X years for this, X years for that) and referenced guidelines from consumer advocacy groups would be extra helpful!

posted by fizzix to Work & Money (9 answers total)

"payments for utilities, rental insurance & leases at places where I no longer live and or utilities that I have different providers now"

Those can go I am betting, why would any of the providers care? Same as to car items.
posted by Freedomboy at 6:04 PM on June 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

This isn't the type of answer you're looking for, but if you digitize all your paperwork, you'll never have to worry about "how long" again, and you'll have instant access to every document forever. We scan everything (or download PDF statements), and recently saved ourselves several weeks of work because we kept copies of two documents from eight years ago that we had long ago tossed. In case it helps, here are the sub-folders in our Family Documents folder:

Banking
Cars
Credit
Employment
Genealogy
House
ICE [In Case of Emergency]
Income
Income Tax
Insurance
Investments and Retirement
Legal
Medical
Monthly Bills
Personal Documents
Receipts
posted by davcoo at 6:16 PM on June 27, 2018 [10 favorites]

Best answer: I've also thought about this issue quite a bit, and here's where I've settled in:
-Medical/dental records you keep forever. It's your health and it matters. Rx receipts and records of payments to the doctor need to be kept absolutely no longer than you keep your income tax returns since you're only retaining them in case you get audited.
-Old leases and utility bills can easily be chucked. I can't imagine any reason you might need them.
-Car information related to vehicles I no longer own I keep only for historical purposes, in case I ever wonder how much I paid for that cute little car, etc.
-For financial statements, I shred the quarterly statements at the end of every year when the annual statement comes. I could easily make a case, though, for keeping nothing I could easily access online, but I tend to be a bit insecure about such things. YMMV.
-Old W2s I would probably keep forever, because there's really not much paper involved and *someday* you may wonder how much you got paid in your very first job. Or something like that.
-I wouldn't keep any statements for paid-off loans except for the final statement showing no balance. You never know when a bank might go wacko and need to be shown proof that you owe nothing.
-Other things: I keep old tax returns and supporting documentation (for seven years) and old investment annual statements because I might sometime want to access those when my computer is turned off. Any legal papers (divorce papers, estate documents, small claims court records, etc.) I keep forever, just to be on the safe side. Sometimes these things can come back to bite you in the ass when you least expect it. And I keep forever the receipts, plans, and details from any home improvement project. These I keep in folders clearly marked with the dates involved. Do you know when you last replaced your roof? Or your water heater? Someone is going to ask you that question sometime, for sure.
posted by DrGail at 6:54 PM on June 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

I scan it & can it.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:33 PM on June 27, 2018

Ever since having my identity stolen in 2006, I've been keeping all financial documents for 7 years on a rolling basis) from their original date.

Why seven?

Because the three major credit reporting agencies (Equifax, TransUnion, Experian) use seven years of financial data to calculate credit scores.

And because Hell is not having any documents to prove you didn't do something.
posted by BadgerDoctor at 8:53 PM on June 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

A CPA/tax preparer told us to keep records for 7 years in case of an IRS audit.
posted by Cranberry at 12:41 AM on June 28, 2018 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Here is my exhaustive list of what I keep:

Paper:
Real property deeds and any current mortgage paperwork including the note
Vehicle titles and current insurance and registration
Tax returns for the past 7 years including W-2's and receipts for deductions
Birth certificates, social security cards, marriage certificate, passports

Digital (Dropbox) All of the above plus:
Current leases
Current drivers licenses, front and back
All of the full insurance policies (car, home, business, umbrella)
Tax returns going back further than 7 years (why not, they don't take up any space)
Last two months' paystubs if I am planning to borrow money
Any real estate transaction paperwork (purchases, sales, refinances)
Payoff letters/proof (mortgages, student loans, etc.)
Account numbers for closed accounts (this has occasionally come in handy)
Retirement account paperwork
Kids' immunization records

(I do also happen to have all the healthcare stuff, but that's just because I digitize it to claim with the FSA and I'm lazy about deleting, I can't imagine a scenario when I'd have to pull up a copay receipt.)

There's no reason to keep utility bills, payments for places you no longer live, car stuff from cars you no longer own, or financial statements from long ago, IMO.
posted by rabbitrabbit at 6:35 AM on June 28, 2018 [1 favorite]

Rabbitrabbit and I have almost the same scheme, but mine's more of a rule-of-thumb: if it's an actual certificate of something, I keep it, otherwise, I keep a year's worth of paper and scan-and-toss on a rolling schedule. I really don't think about whether I 'should' keep something or not, I just kinda keep it all, since it's going in the bin in a year.

I also heartily endorse scanning everything of any value to you: old pictures, random notes on the fridge, funny ad circulars that make you laugh, poignant christmas cards, you name it, I scan it. I may still keep it, but I certainly scan it. After all, storage is cheap, and scanners really aren't, these days - I got a cheap wand scanner years ago and it's still going strong.
posted by eclectist at 3:06 PM on June 28, 2018

Just for the people wondering why you would ever need old utility bills: about 8 years ago when the government was doing one of those first time homeowner rebate things, I coincidentally happened to qualify. Yay! However, they wanted copies of *5 years' worth* of my old power bills to prove that I had, in fact, lived at that previous address all that time, or something. Being a semi-hoarder, I actually had them, but I can't imagine how much fun that would've been to try and get through the power company instead.
posted by storminator7 at 11:33 AM on July 3, 2018