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Unbelievable! Old bills... what old bills? I have not received a paper bill in a decade or more. Fortunately, my wife acts as secretary. Once a month she calls up all the bills and pays them electronically. Many such as mortgage and car payments are paid automatically out of our banking account. What is left over takes 15-30 minutes, once a month. My wife even has auto payments going to the credit cards. The payments are enough to avoid any penalties and credit damage in case she falls behind in paying the full amounts by a few days.
My tax records and filing are also electronic. I file through TurboTax and never make any printouts. I keep the files and supporting electronic documents indefinitely on two different hard drives. In addition I might have a few paper receipts, documents and notes. I keep those for 7 years.
I do have a small file of paper that I retain for years as needed; including are wills, house and mortgage documents, warranties and contracts for house remodeling and repairs. The entire pile will easily fit in a small letter sized accordion file.
YOu can scan on a smartphone. All you do is take a picture of the document. There are apps but an in an Iphone you can do it in notes, as well so no need to even buy an app anymore.
And to answer the original question, I do not keep much of anything. I keep utility bills for a few months when I have to prove residency for the school district. Other than that, I shred everything.
I get no paper bills in the mail. Everything that I pay is done online, and if I want to look for a payment, I can look on that biller's website, or search within my bank. And all my statements are online. I have no need to keep paper bills around.
A heck of a lot more reliable than having faith in a piece of paper that one fire could destroy. If I keep electronic documents, I can back them up in the cloud and in multiple locations so easily. If the cloud service fails, I still have them on my RAID unit, and if one hard drive fails in the RAID, I can replace it with no data loss. If the entire RAID somehow just failed, I have the documents on my SSD, so there are so many backups that it would take basically the end of the world to knock them all out.
Besides my mortgage statement, I never receive paper statements anymore, as I look at them and pay almost all my bills online. It's just so much more convenient for me. The only regular bills I pay by check are my mortgage and medical bills if credit card isn't possible. I scan important documents such as documents when purchasing or selling a home or receipts for expensive items that have a warranty (ex. sofa or mattress). I also scan and keep all my mortgage statements, although I probably don't need to. I also have some paper documents like 5 years of tax returns, blood test results, documents when I was hired for my current job but that's about it. Most companies have their statements available online if you really need them.
I have not received a hard copy monthly bill or statement in decades.
I always pay electronically and when possible, automatically.
I save only one copy of each account .. usually at account open or year-end just in case my computer is toasted.
EVERYTHING fits in a single file folder, which I have never needed to access.
Last edited by PamelaIamela; 10-18-2018 at 11:18 AM..
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