I am going through boxes of paperwork that we have dragged around the country with us for decades because we have been too lazy to take care of it.
The advice I heard is keep taxes for 7 years. I’m reluctant to part with them at all. What about other stuff?
We have bank statements, cancelled checks (that alone tells you how old they are–when was the last time a bank sent home cancelled checks?), paperwork from the house we bought in 2006 and lost in 2011. Utility bills I don’t worry about. I’ve dug through it and shredded papers with SS#s, but there’s tons of other detritus and the shredder we have doesn’t have a big capacity. We’re in a very large apartment complex, so taking it out back and burning or soaking it isn’t an option. Shoulda done it while we could have.
Get a better shredder, they’re not that expensive. I have one that does several pages at once and plastic cards! It was under $100.
Once a year I spend an afternoon returning to it, until it’s done. Not too hard really!
But a better shredder will really make a difference. Something to consider, Good Luck!
Many old pay stubs include too much info, like your SSN. When I went through and got rid of our old records last year. I did it by a lot of grunt work. Ripping names, account numbers & SSN info off of old papers and eventually burning that part. The paper I then recycled.
A cross-cut shredder is a very good method.
For most old stuff, I just toss it. Especially minor stuff like utility bills. But I’ve done the same even with old credit card bills. I’m sure someone will have a link to a very scary story, but I’m not convinced that someone with my old Visa bill from 2004 is going to see that I bought towels from Target and will steal my identity.
Me too. Old checks (from closed accounts) just get tossed. I’d be more careful with checks from current accounts (although everyone you write a check to has the ability to grab your address and account number).
I keep tax records a long time.
I keep old closing documents on houses I don’t own anymore, but I can’t think of a reason I’d ever need them.
Utility bills and the like go into the garbage the day they’re paid.
I still have old boxes of my mother’s stuff. She died in 2004. Do I really have to burn or shred those? (I do have to look through them one piece of paper at a time, unfolding everything, which is why some of them are still around; she had dementia toward the end and a box mostly full of old bank statements may have cash stuck inside an envelope, or a personal letter throwing light on a bit of family history.)
There are commercial shredding companies that pick up documents from financial firms or hospitals to be shredded in bulk. You could see if one of those companies is near you and if you can drop off a few boxes to be shredded. Also, sometimes, there will be a municipal shredding day where a truck based shredder is parked at the community center and residents can bring boxes of paperwork to be shredded.
You can drop them off at Office Depot for shredding, too (or so I’ve been told).
You might also check with your work to see if they offer free shredding. My old office had a shredding day about every quarter. Pretty cheap work benefit to provide.
They charge. It isn’t much, but it costs. It’d be more cost-effective to buy a shredder for home – just be darn sure to keep the blades oiled, and dig out the accumulated gunk often.
Shredding large amounts of paper at home is really tedious, through. And I’ve had to replace a shredder after I burned out the motor from overuse.
Fortunately the office I work at has a large locked bin for confidential shredding. Staff are allowed to toss our confidential personal papers.
I shred all tax papers over 7 years old. However proof of what’s been spent on our home over the last 34 years (of significance) is kept.
The key is to use shredder oil. It really helps the shredder parts from grinding on each other and helps prevent jams. The first thing the shredder repair guy/gal will ask when your big office shredder breaks is if you’ve been regularly using shredder oil. Don’t put it directly in on the gears, put it on a piece of paper and run that through. You can apply it directly if your shredder is constantly running slow or jamming, but put it on the paper for regular maintenance.
I know about shredder oil. You can buy sheets of paperboard that have shredder oil embedded within, so just shredding the sheet lubricates the mechanism.
If you’re in a very large apartment complex, you could ask the management if papershredding service something they might be willing to look into.
For added security, use a crosscut shredder.
We’ve got those around our office too. (I guess I’ll eventually see my office again. :)) Nobody’s ever said we can’t dump our personal papers in there, AFAIK; it probably wouldn’t make much of a dent in the overall volume in normal times.
I kinda like having old credit card statements filed away. If I want to know the name of that restaurant that we went to twice when we were in NOLA a dozen years ago because it had the really amazing crawfish etouffée, its name is there in my statements. I like being able to pull that info out of my records. And all those statements only take up a few inches in a file box, so there’s essentially no cost to keeping them.
Virtually every company I do business with (credit card issuers, banks, investment firms, cell phone providers, cable companies, etc) allow you to download PDF versions of the monthly statements from their websites. So I keep electronic copies of all of that on my PC.
(I do agree with what you said about leaving personal papers in the office shredder bin to be shredded along with the official stuff.)
How about just tossing it all in the garbage?–You just need good timing!
Find out when the garbage truck comes to empty the dumpster behind your apartment. Then wait for it.
While the truck is maneuvering towards the dumpster,toss your boxes into it, and hang around for 2 minutes to watch it all being added to the truck and compressed with the tons of garbage already in the the truck.
Seems pretty safe to me.
Unless you’re a person of interest to the CIA or KGB. 
We had a cleaning lady who decided that she would help us out by grinding all of our coffee beans for us, and she burned out the motor in our coffee mill.
As to the OP, you say you live in a large apartment complex. I presume that means that you’ve got a few dumpsters around. I’d just toss them with the kitchen trash, you know, Potato peelings, in bacon fat, and coffee grounds, and egg shells, and soggy corn flakes, basically the kind of stuff that Wilbur would find in his slops trough in Charlotte’s Web. Do you seriously think that anybody’s going to go dumpster diving for your personal financial records from 20 years ago?