Drowning in paperwork

Thursdays_child_3

I am trying to sort out our paperwork and have shredded a lot of it but I wondered about the 6 year thing. Should you keep everything for 6 years?

It is too late for me now as I only have 3 years worth of paperwork, am I in trouble?

Stephen_Leak

Thursdays_child wrote: »

as I only have 3 years worth of paperwork, am I in trouble?

Only if you need something from 4 years ago.

FEE_100

I only keep bank mortgage an visa statements. (since 83:o) Everything else goes in the shredder even the pay slips as soon as they come in, can always get copies from work if I need them. Do keep car house pet and all the other insurances til they run out and then shred them as soon as they new one drops though the door!

Penelope_Penguin

Thursdays_child wrote: »

I am trying to sort out our paperwork and have shredded a lot of it but I wondered about the 6 year thing. Should you keep everything for 6 years?

It is too late for me now as I only have 3 years worth of paperwork, am I in trouble?

Possibly AFAIK, the Tax Man can ask for proof of income, etc for 6 years :eek: I keep our tax affairs in an A4 envelope for each tax year. When I do our returns, I throw away the oldest one

I'll add this to the exisitng thread on paperwork, to give you more ideas.

Penny. x

PlutoinCapricorn

|t bears repeating: with a scanner and an organised set of disk files you need never lose any records. You can have the best of both worlds: keep and throw away!

You can also summarise some records on spreadsheets for comparison purposes, electricity bills and payslips for example.

You just need to get into certain habits, perhaps after dealing with the existing mass of papers. I am sure that I am not the only person who tore large numbers of recipes and articles out of newspapers: they are all scanned now! if it is just a small tip in an article or a useful website, again you can put it on a spreadsheet.

Obviously key documents are retained in their original form, but you can always print off old bank statements from your disk records if necessary.

ELIZA_D

right starting now x

Olliebeak

Please, everybody - it should go without saying - remove your name/address and account numbers from everything before chucking out!

Obviously that doesn't apply if you're able to shred everything - but then some local authorities won't accept shredded paper in the recycling. I know ours won't - very strange, it's STILL paper after all.

greenbee

Re. paperless systems - remember to save copies of bills/payslips to your own computer and back up, as otherwise when you move supplier or employer you lose access to your paperwork!

I was made redundant recently, and although I remembered to make sure I had copies of all my payslips, I forgot to take the detailed copies of my expense claims, so am now trying to get them to send them over as I need them for my tax return (claiming for mileage paid at 12p/mile rather than 40p/mile).

Having spoken to our employee & union reps about the problems they are seeing with pension calculations for those who are being made redundant and taking their pensions, they have recommended keeping payslips until retirement, so that there is proof of every payment and I can make sure I get the pension I am entitled to :rolleyes:

I have just sorted bank statements back to 1991 into envelopes by year, and am hoping (given that I've never needed to look back more than a year!) that I'll be able to persuade myself to dispose of them at some point.

If you have a confidential waste system at work (one that you KNOW is reliable - ask whoever is responsible for auditing it!) or an industrial shredder, its a great way of getting rid of any backlog.

PlutoinCapricorn

Where payslips are concerned, if you check them each month to ensure that they are correct, you can check the "to date" totals annually against the P60s and P45s: if they match, then you need only retain the P60s and P45s. Your bank statements will be evidence of the net amounts paid each month.

JoKay_2

lil_me wrote: »

For each year I have a box, I did this last year and plan to stick to it. Everything that I need/want to keep inc credit card statements (incase of purchase problems especially) utility bills (to see what we have used and incase of any problems)

I've just started a similar system - I had a pile of stuff to be 'filed' and then thought to myself - when am I going to need this stuff? Is it really worth the hours and hours it'll take to file into the folders I have (but there's not much in them )? I decided not - in the unlikely event that I'll need to refer to something, I'll know which year I need then look through that.

I do keep car related stuff separate though...