Saving ira 401k and brokerage statements

[djw3580]

In early days with Morgan Stanley, I saved all printed statements. Now, I rely on online documents and don't print anything. Is it necessary to keep the volumes of statements I printed years and years ago? Do you keep any current hard copies?

 

[MRG]

What purpose do they have?

 

[Alan]

I have precisely zero brokerage paper statements. Even current ones that matter I simply save to pdf.

 

[Andre1969]

How far back can you access your documents? Years ago, American Century lost my cost basis information for the "uncovered" shares of a mutual fund I have with them. So, whenever I sell anything from that fund, if it's an uncovered share, the tax statement shows its cost basis as zero, which then makes it look like the sale is pure profit.

I tend to be a hoarder, and in this case, it paid off, as I have just about every statement I ever got from American Century, even dating back to when they were 20th Century. So, come tax time, I give my income tax man the actual cost basis for those shares, and he uses that instead of the zero.

This has never raised any red flags with the IRS, but I do worry about it. So, whenever I sell off some of that fund, I always unload the uncovered shares first, in the hopes of eliminating any potential problems that might pop up, if the IRS ever questions it.

My guess is this wouldn't be a problem in a tax-deferred account like an IRA or 401k, where all of your withdrawals are subject to tax. But in my case, this particular account is after-tax.

 

[scrabbler1]

With my old 401k statements, I kept them all until my employer changed 401k administrators. Then, I kept only the last one so I could check how the transfer to the new one went. When I left the company, I also kept only the last one. I meant to do a print screen the last day before I emptied the account as part of a direct rollover to an IRA, but I forgot.

I kept a spreadsheet with the 401k's quarterly balances and activity from the statements, so the data was kept in that form.

As for brokerage statements, I keep the monthly ones for the current year. When I receive the annual statement, I discard the monthly ones. I keep a spreadsheet for those account balances and activity, too. After 30 years, that binder is getting a little thick, so I should probably prune it down.

 

[rk911]

In early days with Morgan Stanley, I saved all printed statements. Now, I rely on online documents and don't print anything. Is it necessary to keep the volumes of statements I printed years and years ago? Do you keep any current hard copies?

i digitize our statements. electrons take up very little space. why? i'm a little bit felix with a touch of monk.

 

[disneysteve]

I keep statements that document cost basis info for taxable holdings. For every other account, I just keep the year-end statement. It doesn't really serve any purpose other than for my own review of how we've progressed over the years.

 

[Souschef]

I keep my year end IRA statements, as I need them to calculate my RMD. They go in my tax file with all the 1099's,etc.

 

[youbet]

I keep documentation for post-tax IRA contributions to back up my form 8606's.

For taxable accounts, I keep documentation to establish the cost basis of most holdings.

I'm still doing the above on paper but recognize that I should get the stuff digitized. (It's too easy to just hand the stuff to DW who keeps our files.)

 

[Graybeard]

I have my year end statements from my 401k going back to at least 1987, I still have some money in the 401k.

I have December statements from Vanguard that show the activity for each account for the year so I only had to keep 1 statement per account. Then they conned me into switching to a brokerage account and now the December statements are just for December. Since that started I kept every statement for all the accounts with them. They are useful, I sometimes want to know when I went into or left a mutual fund and I have them in a filing cabinet. I asked how long they'd keep them online and was given a vague answer which lead me to think they could disappear after say 20 years. If my house burns down I'd lose them otherwise I keep the paper.

I went paperless for all financial statements about 4 or 5 months ago. I don't want anyone getting my mail by mistake, it has happened, and seeing the size of these accounts. Another thing is I don't have to wait 7 or 10 days for statements to reach me, I can print off financial statements the day they are ready.