Financial Documents: To Keep or To Toss?

In this day and age of online banking and account management, it’s good to know what physical items to keep around in case of an emergency. On the other hand, there’s no point in having excess paper documents clog up your filing cabinet.
What you should Keep
Paper documents like a will, insurance and a retirement plan are definite keepers. If you haven’t already, you should keep these things in a secure area like a bank safety deposit box or a fireproof safe. Also things like separation and divorce documents, real estate deeds, titles and tax returns for the last seven years are a must as well. Make sure you keep those pay stubs until the end of the year as well to compare the year end totals with the W2 forms from your employer.
What you should Toss
The documents that you can toss include things like bank receipts and ATM transactions, once you’ve checked that all the transactions are correct on your bank statement. The same goes for bills that have been paid and you know the checks have been cashed. Shred all the documents you discard. If you don’t own a shredder, you might be able to use one at work. If you have a wood burning fireplace, use a few of your documents as fire starter and then curl up next to the fire with a book while the rest of the unwanted paper keeps you nice and toasty.