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Old 10-18-2018, 11:13 AM
 
3,286 posts, read 1,794,798 times
Reputation: 10240

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Quote:
Originally Posted by raggedjim View Post
You guys have a lot of faith in 1's and 0's...
I worked as a programmer /analyst for 39 years, most of it for banks.
If you had any idea how much computer (night) time is devoted to backing data up you would be absolutely shocked.
Major financial intitutions have a fiduciary/legal responsibility to secure, safequard, and most of all RETAIN and RECOVER information in extreme redundancy to the point of recoverability beyond a nuclear event, which fortunately has not yet been put to the test.

Ever heard of 'Iron Mountain'?
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Old 10-20-2018, 11:52 PM
 
128 posts, read 112,651 times
Reputation: 78
i have begun scanning old bills to an older external hdd. that way i have a copy.
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Old 10-21-2018, 10:59 AM
 
Location: Austin, Texas
2,013 posts, read 1,424,565 times
Reputation: 4062
Quote:
Originally Posted by raggedjim View Post
You guys have a lot of faith in 1's and 0's...
Well, the world does kind of run on them these days...
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Old 10-23-2018, 02:22 PM
 
Location: Kirkland, WA (Metro Seattle)
6,031 posts, read 6,116,208 times
Reputation: 12508
Quote:
Originally Posted by blktoptrvl View Post
I pay EVERY bill - usually within a day or two of getting them. I generally do not accept ebills if I can avoid them because I can sometimes easily ignore emails. I mark the paid date on the paper bill and put it into a folder (I used to scan them but my scanner has become a PITA and I haven't replaced it yet). I think I do this mostly because I don't trust companies to always do good accounting.

To be honest, I cannot really give more than one good reason for keeping more than the past statement, but I actually keep a rolling 2 years.

The one benefit I do get is that I can easily look back over the 2 years for a pattern to see if the expenses are headed up or down - and then adjust if necessary and possible.

Does anyone else keep old bills? What do you do with them?
Not really clear on what is being asked.

Verizon, e.g., provides various analytics on data and other usage for a rolling couple years, if you dig into their tools a bit. No calculation needed on my end; in fact I used their own tools to definitively prove, based on my particular use cases, that I had no further use for them and could safety switch to Google Fi. So, I did.

100% of my bills other than MasterCard and AmX are auto paid. I don't have time for "cheques," envelopes, stamps, other 20th Century Luddite garbage. Those other two I pay based on other formulas, with reminders in Gmail that can't really be missed.

I went to the utility site the other day (City of XXXX), and lookie if they didn't have charts and graphs with my usage, including raw data dumps if I want to use Excel to do some analytics like "my peak use day of week" or similar. Sometimes I do, but mostly that's a waste of time.

MasterCard and AmX in-particular keep good archives in case I need to look anything up years later. I don't know the retention period, nor has it ever come up that I wanted but could not find a particular charge from year or three ago, usually for warranty purposes.

I have a Fujitsu scanner bought new in 2011 that was then, and is now (in later versions) stupendous for volume and precision. All outcomes are stored in Google Cloud and cannot be "lost" unless I'm a complete idiot. I scanned some horrific number of pages from my dad's files when he passed. I mean file after file, more than a thousand pages from his filing cabinets because my old man was nothing if not organized. More, I mailed home, but that was expensive. Money well spent, scanner paid for itself during settling his estate. Since I OCR everything, which is good but not perfect, I can *usually* find info I need later via keyword.

Not sure how a scanner can become "a PITA" unless it was garbage-in/garbage out. These days I put all receipts in a pile and every few months, when it hits about a foot high, run them through the Fujitsu w/OCR, converted all to PDF and popping into a certain folder on Google Cloud. That takes maybe an hour or 1/2,920th of my available time in a year?

I see the latest iteration of the Fujitsu scanner is $400 or so, but 4.5 star rating over 1,200 reviews on Amazon. They're the very last word for home productivity...speed and accuracy and high-definition... and if my 2011 model ever dies, I'll update it. Not sure why anyone would have a flatbed, all-in-one, or other non-productive, balky BS if actually trying to setup up rapid workflow at a home or even small office.

I gain far more peace of mind over using my medium-duty shredder. I don't use it often enough anymore, but loading that crap through it sure feels good.
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Old 10-23-2018, 02:30 PM
 
Location: Kirkland, WA (Metro Seattle)
6,031 posts, read 6,116,208 times
Reputation: 12508
Quote:
Originally Posted by PamelaIamela View Post
I worked as a programmer /analyst for 39 years, most of it for banks.
If you had any idea how much computer (night) time is devoted to backing data up you would be absolutely shocked.
Major financial intitutions have a fiduciary/legal responsibility to secure, safequard, and most of all RETAIN and RECOVER information in extreme redundancy to the point of recoverability beyond a nuclear event, which fortunately has not yet been put to the test.

Ever heard of 'Iron Mountain'?
I was on Microsoft's O365 user strategy team for about six months helping with some of that, in 2014. The paradigm has changed a bit. The retention periods can still be long, decades in some cases. But thank God that's then a function of distributed storage, which is disaster-resistant outside of any one continent. Even an EMP would probably only wipe away one continent at a time, though if that happens we've got more pressing problems. I hesitate to say how much Cloud storage is resistant to weaponized EMP or even strong solar flare...hopefully, "lots".

"Iron Mountain" and crap like that will by and large move into the dustbin of history as we move from on-prem to Cloud, and the need for paper-anything go up in smoke where it belongs. That revolution is in-progress, as-predicted by Microsoft in 2007. I sold my stock in Barnes and Noble in 1999 when I had the first primitive book reader; it was obvious where that (was, is) going.
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Old 10-23-2018, 03:04 PM
 
10,500 posts, read 6,985,776 times
Reputation: 32334
Quote:
Originally Posted by blktoptrvl View Post
I pay EVERY bill - usually within a day or two of getting them. I generally do not accept ebills if I can avoid them because I can sometimes easily ignore emails. I mark the paid date on the paper bill and put it into a folder (I used to scan them but my scanner has become a PITA and I haven't replaced it yet). I think I do this mostly because I don't trust companies to always do good accounting.

To be honest, I cannot really give more than one good reason for keeping more than the past statement, but I actually keep a rolling 2 years.

The one benefit I do get is that I can easily look back over the 2 years for a pattern to see if the expenses are headed up or down - and then adjust if necessary and possible.

Does anyone else keep old bills? What do you do with them?

Why don't you just use electronic billing instead?
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Old 10-29-2018, 10:12 AM
 
128 posts, read 112,651 times
Reputation: 78
the last several months i've been scanning old bills, purchases, etc into my computer and saving the pdfs onto an external hdd.

that way i have records of my own....
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Old 11-01-2018, 11:45 AM
 
Location: Kirkland, WA (Metro Seattle)
6,031 posts, read 6,116,208 times
Reputation: 12508
Quote:
Originally Posted by tdredi View Post
the last several months i've been scanning old bills, purchases, etc into my computer and saving the pdfs onto an external hdd.

that way i have records of my own....
Might want to a) replace the bolded, or b) double-back it with free Cloud storage from:

Google (my personal favorite, since about 2007)
Azure/OneDrive
Dropbox
Amazon

There are dozens more, notably Apple, but those are four I use, Dropbox and Amazon only to maybe a few hundred megabytes. They are 'free' in all probability to get people off of physical media, which is prone to error and failure. Cloud mostly is not; they've worked out the bugs past half-dozen years.
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Old 11-01-2018, 11:48 AM
 
Location: SoCal
20,160 posts, read 12,715,855 times
Reputation: 16993
I usually keep about 20 years, it did pay off at one time. My brokerage was gone. Only I had the statements. So it netted me 5-figure settlement on a class action lawsuit. No bad for my work.
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Old 11-03-2018, 01:06 AM
 
Location: California
37,097 posts, read 42,103,316 times
Reputation: 34962
I keep CC statements for a year, in my Big Red Binder with 12 pockets. Every month I throw out last years statements and fill it up with the current months statements. It's been my habit for 30 years, even though it doesn't make much sense these days. Sooner or later I'll break the habit since I'm already tracking everything online. I'm just now cutting the cord with cable tv and I expect to make more changes in the next few years.
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