Folks, I am DROWNING in paper! I was organizing some of it today, and realized that I am seriously running out of space. But most of it is taken up with things like five-year-old pay stubs and phone bills from three states ago. How long do I need to keep such things?
Suppose I decide to set some specific cutoff date in the past, say two years ago, and trash everything from before then. While this would be extremely cathartic and probably good for my chi or my feng shui or my sashimi or something, how likely am I to need records from before then?
I’m not planning on buying a house anytime soon, though I may need a car loan (or gulp! more student loans) in the next year or so.
I suspect there’s some well-defined factual answer for this, but I hope it’s not “keep everything for ten years,” because I really hate having these huge, heavy loads of bank statements from the last decade and records of my old dog’s puppy booster shots cluttering up my storage system.
I work in the financial industry and my opinion would be two years for most items. If you have investments you should keep only the year end statements going back five years or more. Your tax returns each year should also fall into the five year category. Very few statements other than those two categories will ever be needed. I think your two year and older toss is the right idea.
I’d keep everything that could affect your taxes for three years, because (generally) the statute of limitations closes for tax returns filed over three years ago.
Taxes and any financial records connected to them: 5 years (just to be safe) if you filed the standard form in the last five years, cut it down to 3 years back.
Personal Medical records: 3 years. Chances are there wont be much of this anyway so you may want to consider keeping them all. Get a medium size box and put them all in there. If they dont fit, throw out the oldest ones.
Pet Medical records: 2 years. Either that or get pets with shorter life spans.
Utility Statements (Phone, gas, electric, water, gasoline cards): 2 years of current residence.
Pay stubs: 1 year of the current employer. Keep all december paystubs for tax purposes.
Cancelled checks: 2 years (of the current bank) or let the bank keep them.
I am a regular at a legal forum and over the past few years some horror stories have been written from things that happened 10 to 20 years ago. Based on this, I would suggest keeping any receipts and cancelled checks for any criminal or civil fines paid forever. One recent post was from someone who was being sued for $600 for a $28 speeding ticket from 20 years ago. The person claims they paid the fine but do they have any proof? No. Any other financial document should be kept a minimum of your states statute of limitations for debts. You can find them here.
Thanks for the helpful responses, everyone. Now I’m paranoid about trashing something and needing it later; I guess I’ll just go get some more storage space.