Do You Have a Filing System for Documents?

[jim584672]

I scanned EVERY document, probably a file cabinet and a half and dumped the physical. If I ever want to become a fully nomadic traveler I don't have to worry about storing paper or loosing info. Also electronic files are essentially space-less and there is no reason to delete old records.

 

[jim584672]

I've thought about using Dropbox to store scanned docs also on several occasions, but am not yet entirely comfortable with the security aspects of putting confidential docs with PII and other financial data up on "the cloud"..

Are you encrypting docs before uploading? I believe DropBox was hacked at one point (2016?) and while that appears to be more related to getting ~62 million user ids and passwords, not entirely sure what the security of posted docs was or may be nowadays..ditto for the other Cloud services - not just DropBox but just about any one of them..security of posted docs is something I think about a lot and probably why I still keep everything only local (NAS, jump drive or local hard drive)..

I would never trust cloud encryption, it must leave your box encrypted by yourself with a solid program, like GPG properly set.

 

[2177V]

I'm a paper guy, and anti scanner guy because keeping ongoing access to your cloud account in the very long term might take effort, just as moving documents from local storage media formats as technology changes might take effort. The point I was going to make, though, is, paper guy or not, the huge shelf in the garage would bother me. That's why I limit myself to the three "crud-enzas" in my office, all hanging files. When one section gets "tight", meaning I can't slide it back a couple of inches to pull out a folder, stuff goes in the shredder.

There are some papers that has some sentimental value to me and shedding is out of the question: Artwork and/or letters from my children and grandchildren, documents on my family tree, original retirement documents, legal documents, documents from my decreased parents, newspapers which published letters that I wrote to the editor on political issues or the day that my team won the Superbowl or the NBA championship, college papers that I enjoy reading again, etc, etc. I scan these sentimental documents only as a backup. I also scan documents that has no sentimental value and only those original documents goes into the shredder.

I have had a long and fulfilling life and this resulted in numerous boxes that I store in my garage. Super critical documents are stored in a fireproof safe. The boxes on my shelf in my garage also contains other non-paperwork stuff. The living space in my house has zero clutter since nearly all of my clutter are packed neatly into boxes to make the Mrs happy. There are people who has so much clutter that they park theirs cars outside their garage or rent storage space. I am not one of them.

 

[kcowan]

As soon as I confirmed that statement were available for 18 years for a small fee, I stopped downloading all statements. I do download all transactions from CCs, Investment and bank accounts monthly to spreadsheets.

But the only PDFs I keep are my tax filings, including any ancilliary correspondence.

(I have been retired 17 years and discovered I was a glorified file clerk after 10 years! Now I am at a greater stage of being retired. We are totally electronic so no shredding required.)

 

[Cobra9777]

I'm pretty diligent about tax records and HSA receipts. Beyond that, very little paper is received or saved. I don't scan, print, or retain anything on a routine basis (physically or electronically) except HSA and tax stuff. A few one-off exceptions:

We have a fire proof box that contains tax records for the last 7 years, all of our wills and related documents, passports, vehicle titles, unused credit/debit cards, SS cards, birth certificates, and other important documents.

My desk in the office has a 2-drawer file cabinet. The upper drawer is current, ongoing stuff and it's kept well organized. Old stuff is regularly purged and shredded. There are folders for health insurance, EOBs, HSA receipts, current year tax documents, a tickler file, car registration and maintenance records, etc.

The lower drawer is less important, less current, and probably needs to be purged a bit... dog shot records, house and car purchase documents, old insurance claim documents, invoices for big purchases/repairs, retirement documents for DW and myself, rental-related documents, and a few tax returns older than 7 years.

Only other thing worth mentioning is that I have 3 small cardboard boxes in my closet. Two of them contain sales tax receipts for a couple recent years that we took the manual sales tax deduction on our federal return rather than using the IRS calculation. The other box contains the first 5-6 years of HSA receipts.

 

[scrabbler1]

I have begun my annual transition to my files with the new year having just begun. For my regular bills (CC, utilities, banking receipts) I keep one calendar year plus the year in progress, so the 2018s got shredded so the 2019s can replace them as 2020's bills begin anew.


But I haven't received my last 2019 bank statement because the statement period is mid-month, so 2018 will get shredded soon. Also, I shred my monthly investment statements and transaction confirmations after I get the annual statement, which won't be for another few weeks.


I began creating a 2019 income tax folder so the 2018 folder becomes one of the most recent 5 years I keep full folders. That bounces my 2013 folder to closet storage status, which means I stripped it of unnecessary stuff such as the tax booklets, greatly shrinking its bulk.


So the shredder is not nearly done working yet for this time of year.