Doing some spring cleaning of paper and digital. It looks like I missed a box of paper statements.
Thoughts
I could just scan them all regardless
they are older than 7 years - why not just shred or toss in the recycle ? Do I really need that insurance invoice from 20xx for example or that car statement of a car I no longer own?
This then leads to…in going fully digital…have we stopped cleaning out records? I remember my dad would shred things that were older than 7 years. Do we just store forever?
I’m not sure if this is helpful to you or not but in my own experience I have found that I have kept paper records for a number of years and have done nothing with them. So the benefits have not outweighed the investment of time and work.
Now, I only keep paper records from the previous year and anything older I try to shred and recycle.
Back when I worked in the document management software domain had occasions to deal with customers who were “records managers” or “company archivists”. Both these group talked about retention periods for various classes of documents; typically none of the kind of documents you mention would they have kept beyond seven years, which was the magic period for tax inspections. So, long story short, I would destroy those documents and not bother to scan them.
I shred paper and delete digital but the timeframe varies. # of years for tax records is 7 years AFTER the last updated or modified tax return. So it can be more than 7 years from date the tax return was due. 10 Year is a safe bet for me.
We’ve been told by multiple tax accountants and estate attorneys that we do need to keep yearly summaries of all IRA, 401K, Roth Ira et al until all the cash in those accounts is used up so that can add up to a LOT of stuff, whether digital or electronic.
Farms have a 7 year presumption of for profit before having to prove it while other businesses have a 5 year limit. So I keep all farm records for 10 years as well to cover the updated tax returns.
Different businesses have different retention policies but the 7 year is fairly common. A primary reason for deleting old records is so they can’t be subpoenaed in a lawsuit.
I’ve gone very paperless and routinely clear out old stuff. Things I keep long term are medical records, stuff related to things I still own, and memorabilia. For a lot of medical records I keep them in yearly folders and will move the old years into an archive folder so I don’t have to look at them all the time.
When I digitized all my personal records in the early 2000’s I filled several contractor trash bags with decades of shredded checks (remember those?), receipts, and notes, etc. But among the items I kept were scans of the paperwork and manuals, etc. for things that still existed. So when my brother called me a couple of years later I was able to use my phone to retrieve the invoice for the replacement central heating/ac unit in our parent’s home.
If you don’t count my photos, movies, and music, etc. my digital records archive takes up very little room on my Mac and their backups on Backblaze B2 costs almost nothing to store. So yes I’ll probably store them “forever”.
Moving old digital statements, receipts, etc. to archival drives seems like a good way to set and forget. They aren’t on your working drive to clutter it up, and yet are still accessible in case of some odd situation.
Most importantly, moving everything from X year to archival is much less of a time and mental burden than manually deciding which are ‘important’…
A lot of important documents relating to the house, car, tax, pensions, and health remain paper-based here in the UK, so I do keep them as required but review them each January. I don’t see any point keeping car documents for cars I no longer own, but do keep some house paperwork because I’ll need it when I eventually move house.
I’ve just been going through all the apps where I download “interesting” articles to read later - Pocket, Keep-It, GoodLinks, Omnivore, Readwise … - and culling them. How can I have downloaded so many reviews from the London Review of Books over the years? And why? And do I need 15,000 psychiatric PDFs now I’m retired? Software and digital storage has turned me into a hoarder.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot since my dad died. He bequeathed me all his digital stuff. He was a church photographer and I’m trying sort through what feels like millions of duplicates of East Anglian church details. It’s a forbidding task, and I’m determined not to leave my own family the same task when I die. A variant on the theme of digital minimalism?
About once every 18 months I declare read-it-later bankruptcy and delete everything I’ve stashed in GoodLinks.
I’ve had to build workflows that actively undermine the digital hoarding demon sitting on my left shoulder and seductively whispering “Maybe you’ll need this later” in my ear. If I really, really need to keep something as part of a project it gets turned into a PDF and stored in a purpose-built repository.
Why wait 18 months? I have a reader filter called that looks like this (I use shortlist mode):
has__not:tags AND
in:later AND
saved__lt:"3 weeks ago" AND
type:article AND
progress:0
Basically: if saved it awhile ago, I don’t know why, I’m not reading it, and it’s just an article, I can delete it. When the API allows, this will be auto-deleted.
Company requirements for record keeping are very different to personal requirements though, some documents are required to be retained by companies by law or by contract, I can’t think of one type that is required by law by a person.
You are right that the law in England does not generally require a person to keep any records, but it can be very difficult and may be impossible to go through various processes (e.g. doing a tax return if required, getting married or divorced, buying or selling a house or car, claiming on insurance, wills) without some key ones, though it is possible (sometimes difficult) to get certified copies of most important things.
We in the UK are relieved of a lot of personal record keeping by the national health service (we don’t have to pay for expensive surgery or other treatment and we register with a general practitioner and usually records move between them when we do) and by the PAYE (pay as you earn) system where tax is deducted from salaries etc. by employers, who also have to keep our pension records for us, as well as contribute financially to them. Having a single statutory land registry helps too.
Anyone can be a business “sole trader” without any form of registration or reporting, but that carries unlimited personal liability for the business so people with any sense keep records anyway.
The company I worked for made sure we all understood that it was The Record Retention and Destruction policy. Some things we were required by law to keep forever; others we were required by the lawyers to shred well in advance of forever.
It’s the kind of discipline I haven’t been able to master with my personal files, alas.
My Mom turned 100 in February. My father died almost 20 years ago. My mother has moved twice since then. I have had to sort through and shred documents like utility bills, prescription receipts, bank statements, checks, etc. from the 1990s.
I can’t assume anything, and must hand-inspect each document. It’s been truly wretched.
I feel your pain! I’m in the process of winding up the estates of both of my in laws and my own parents. I’ve spent the last few years sorting through and shredding heaps of mostly useless paper, often drafts and duplicates or illegible notes. Every now and then I’ll unearth some treasure like a grandparent’s marriage license or a war time love letter, but mostly it’s bank statements from the last century and old electric bills. The documents we really need are nowhere to be found, of course.
I am trying to sort through several years of digitally-saved documents and discard the unnecessary ones. Which ones are the most important to keep and which ones can go?
that looks like this (I use shortlist mode):