How do you manage your household paperwork?

Huskydays

For the snail mail that still comes through; I tend to throw it all into a specific drawer and have a good file/clear out every couple of months (or when I can't find something - whichever comes first). Confidential waste gets burned.
I have a couple of box files - one for my house purchase, another for product guarantees/receipts and the rest is filed in a large, fireproof hanging file box by category (i.e. pets/cars/utilities/taxes/ID/Deeds/etc).

megwump

I have a no paper approach.

I have a box file with legal documents (marriage and birth certificates, mortgage agreement, my original NI card and ALL my old payslips before they went electronic). The file is almost empty! I don't even keep electronic copies of things - I rely on the online account storing things like statements for me; the only exception is that I save my payslips to dropbox.

badger09

megwump wrote: »

I have a no paper approach.

I have a box file with legal documents (marriage and birth certificates, mortgage agreement, my original NI card and ALL my old payslips before they went electronic). The file is almost empty! I don't even keep electronic copies of things - I rely on the online account storing things like statements for me; the only exception is that I save my payslips to dropbox.

That's risky. If you ever close an account or switch it (which results in closure), you'll lose online access to those statements.

eskbanker

badger09 wrote: »

megwump wrote: »

I have a no paper approach.

I have a box file with legal documents (marriage and birth certificates, mortgage agreement, my original NI card and ALL my old payslips before they went electronic). The file is almost empty! I don't even keep electronic copies of things - I rely on the online account storing things like statements for me; the only exception is that I save my payslips to dropbox.

That's risky. If you ever close an account or switch it (which results in closure), you'll lose online access to those statements.

Are you saying that poster is being mutton-headed?

There is also the (hopefully remote) possibility of account closure by the bank itself, which would often be accompanied by removal of online access....

Kernel_Sanders

TheGardener wrote: »

I used to keep all mine (still do) and it paid off when I was able to prove there was an error on my NI record for 1992

It should only be necessary to keep all your P60s, although you should check each April that all your NI contributions show on it before shredding/burning your wage slips.

Robisere

Box files for Tax, Pensions, investments. Separate A4 Lever Arch files for all Bank/other financial stuff, utilities, Medical/dental, Receipts & Guarantees, Social landlord, Councils inc. Council Tax. Both of us have extensive medical history and DLA: I have kept scanned records and phtocopies of every form I sent and/or received to & from DWP. That won a case for me when we lost our house. Since then I have been a little OCD regarding record-keeping, can you blame me?

I go through stuff every April and shred anything that is out of date, all financial, tax and utility records over 6 years old, is shredded, compressed into a box and burned.