Documents how long to save

Here Are Your Options. The Tax Benefits of Donating to Charity. How to Organize Your Records. Weltman says a good way to start is to divide your financial papers into four categories. How to Store Your Files. Sharing is Nice.

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Personal Banking. How long should you keep important documents? Share Close share. Save Close save Added to My Priorities. Close Disclaimer The material provided on this website is for informational use only and is not intended for financial, tax or investment advice. Up Next. Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights.

Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. In This Article Expand. Maintaining a Workable Home Filing System. Set up an Electronic System. Keep Copies. Documents to Store Forever. Documents to Store for a Certain Period of Time. How to Get Rid of Documents.

What Documents to Shred. This document is your legal proof that you own the property. Keep the title to your home until you sell it. Do the same for the title to your car if you have one.

Keep this document as long as you live in the home so that you can refer to it if you have any disputes with your landlord. After that, you can shred it. Some of the most important papers you own are the ones that document the important events in your life. Depending on how your life story has gone, these could include any of the following:. Keep these documents forever, and keep them in a secure place, such as a safe deposit box.

You can refer to it if you suspect anything is missing. Keep this list as long as you have the box. There are two main ways to store your documents: on paper or in digital form. Paper documents fall into several different categories. Credit card receipts, ATM receipts, and bank deposit slips all need to be stored for less than a month.

You can stash these in an envelope or pin them on a receipt stand. At the end of the month, you can check them all against your credit card or bank statement and then dispose of them. Next, some documents — such as quarterly investment reports and insurance forms — need to be kept for a year or less. A handy way to store these is in a filing cabinet or hanging file crate with a separate folder for each category: home, car, financial, and so on.

Finally, there are documents you need to store over the long term, such as tax returns and property records. Storing your long-term documents in a file cabinet, along with your short-term ones, makes it easy to find them when you need them. And if you choose a file cabinet with a lock, it keeps your sensitive personal information away from prying eyes. By contrast, storing your documents in a fireproof safe protects them from damage and theft, but it makes them harder to access.

Small business expert Barbara Weltman, speaking with Consumer Reports, recommends choosing a fireproof safe for documents that are especially sensitive: bank and investment statements, tax documents, estate-planning documents, and pension information. Because these documents contain personal information, such as your Social Security number, leaving them where others could find them puts you at risk for identity theft.

Experts also suggest making a list of all your most important accounts and stashing it in your safe for reference. Keeping your financial documents in digital form can be easier than storing physical documents. However, electronic files are vulnerable to other threats, such as computer viruses and hacking.

Experts disagree over where you should keep vital personal records such as birth certificates, passports, wills, and the titles to your home and car. Weltman recommends putting these documents in a safe deposit box at a bank, but other experts point out that doing so will only allow you to access the documents during bank hours.