retention of documents

magorgirl28

Hi I had an accident in 2013, which took four years to resolve and receive compensation payment.  How long should i keep my records for - 7 years from date of accident or 7 years from final pay-out?  The reason I am asking is that a friend had disposed of their records after 5 years and then 2 years later had a further accident but could not provide any evidence that the injury they suffered second time around was unrelated to the original injury. 

Alter_ego

Why dispose of them?

gettingtheresometime

Alter_ego said:

Why dispose of them?

If the OP didn't want to keep the paperwork they could always scan them and stick them on a memory stick

JJ_Egan

Not a Consumer Right to keep for xxx time .

Question may be better asked on insurance or motoring board .

davidmcn

magorgirl28 said:

a friend had disposed of their records after 5 years and then 2 years later had a further accident but could not provide any evidence that the injury they suffered second time around was unrelated to the original injury. 

Wouldn't that be in their medical records anyway, irrespective of what they kept in their own paperwork? If that's the sort of thing you're worried about then you'd best keep them for life anyway, as in theory anybody may argue that you had a pre-existing condition.

Aylesbury_Duck

As advised by gettingtheresometime, scan them and store them in the cloud, e.g. google docs.  If you don't have access to a scanner, there are free scan apps for your phone that create pdfs from a photo.

peter_the_piper

gettingtheresometime said:

Alter_ego said:

Why dispose of them?

If the OP didn't want to keep the paperwork they could always scan them and stick them on a memory stick

Will memory sticks still be around in 7 plus years?

IvanOpinion

I would also suggest backing them up to cloud storage.  Sync.com offers a few GB storage for free that includes zero knowledge encryption.

Aylesbury_Duck

peter_the_piper said:

gettingtheresometime said:

Alter_ego said:

Why dispose of them?

If the OP didn't want to keep the paperwork they could always scan them and stick them on a memory stick

Will memory sticks still be around in 7 plus years?

I doubt it, and I wouldn't use them as a medium for storage anyway.  Too easy to lose/damage/corrupt.