I’ve got piles of these things sitting around my spare room. Is it really necessary for me to keep them?
IANAFinancial Advisor
Every year around April 15 various and sundry news outlets publish “how long should I keep my receipts” articles. The concensus among the ones I read seems to be keep your monthly statements for at least 3 years and as many as seven, unless they reflect a purchase for which you want to keep a complete record. Personally, I just stick them in a file folder and ignore them. They don’t take up much room and they’re occasionally useful (like when I had to prove to a judge that I’d paid all my rent and the cleared rent checks were all on my statements).
Yes. Take Otto’s advice.
All sorts of occasions can arise when it is useful to refer to your statements, or when various Official people want info that is on them.
There are no occasions when it is useful to want or need info that is on statements you have irretrievably thrown away. (The bank can provide copies, but it takes time and costs money.)
Stick 'em in a file. Know where it is. Over and out.
It is more important to keep the canceled checks. The statements do not prove anything, but they will come in handy in finding when a canceled check cleared.
What financial institution returns cancelled checks anymore?
Mine does - but I’m told that’s a rare situation these days and it’s only a matter of time until my bank stops doing it as well.
My theory is that if you check the bank statement each month and reconcile all the accounts and keep track of them in some financial software package like Quicken, you don’t need to keep the statements around.
I figure that the bank keeps track of stuff also.
Of course, I don’t have that complicated of a financial situation and the odds of the IRS or anyone else needing them is unlikely.
YMMV
Get a shoebox.
Put your cancelled checks and statement back in the envelope, and put it face down on top of last month’s statement. Put your credit card bill in there too, each month. When the box is full, (decades if you have big feet) you put it in a closet, and get another shoebox. After it is a habit, it is no harder than throwing it out.
Why?
Because if you pay all your bills by check, or credit card, no matter how long it is before some jerk looses his end of the paper work, and claims you never paid him for this or that, you just go to box, already in chronological order by when it was paid, and get the cancelled check, fax him a copy, along with your demand for a written apology.
I just finished boxing up my mom’s last ten years of checks, and putting them with the other sixty years worth she still has. By the way, she has caught the bank making mistakes twice. Other minions of stupidity have been found out more often than that.
The bank does the work, you just keep the proof.
Tris