how long to keep statements

Brie

I'm lumping all the statements here into one post even though only a couple are bank accounts......hoping that people can say if I'm being reasonable.

Bank accounts
So I've got our RBS flex account which is a current account which includes are mortgage (basically as an massive overdraft) - back to the year dot 2002.
I've got Barclays back several years but the only reason I have it was for the packaged bit so there's no transactions of note that will ever be needed.  I think I only need 1 year.

Credit cards
Any reason to keep anything more than a year old for stoozing accounts?  Small problem with Barclaycard as they haven't issued a statement in years due to no activity since they dropped the available credit to diddly.  
1 travel credit card used only for foreign travel - one year only should be good enough.
Daily use card - how many years?  5? 7?  just in case I need to look back for something?  We moved just over 5 years back so that might be a good cut off point??

Bills
1 year only or back to the start of a contract? Gas & electric fixed tariff started in Oct 21 so might use that?

Any other ideas?

I don't file anything for tax (yet, might need to next year for pension income only)
I'll keep things like P60s and HMRC notices

And hanging on to anything related to pensions for the time being.

Right?  Wrong?  Why???

Jami74

I am interested in the answers. I don't keep any bank statements. I do check all of my banks/accounts most days and record transactions on my own spreadsheet. I have kept 'loan paid off' and 'account closed' letters, wonder how long I should keep those for? I do not currently file anything for tax. Any big expenditures I keep receipts for. I keep P60's and anything related to pensions. 

Edited to add: I've still got paperwork from tax credits which I stopped claiming in 2016. I don't trust them to not one day decide I owe them thousands.

Rob5342

If they are active accounts then there is probably no need to keep your own copy as banks tend to keep transaction details available for 6 years. If you close accounts then it makes sense to download the statements and keep them in your cloud storage, but they don't take much space so there is no reason to delete older ones really.

Personally I have a spring clean every so often and delete ones that are over 6 years old.

Bridlington1

I've never thrown away a single statement or indeed any letter I've had from any of my banks yet. The same goes for wage slips, HMRC letters, even election notice letters.

I still have statements from my child trust fund going back to 2005. I keep them in part because I like to see what I was getting interest wise in years gone by and also just on the off chance I am asked to prove where my money has come from I can do so. Also I've that many letters, shredding them would take ages and I just can't be bothered for the sake of freeing up a bit of space so it's just easier to keep the documents.


I do have a tendency to hoard things in general to be fair. As long as I've got room for the stuff and it's not costing me anything to keep them I don't see why I should get rid of things unless they are completely broken. I could probably afford to get rid of the child trust fund statements but I can't imagine I ever will.

Rob5342

I'm the opposite, I can't stand clutter so letters get scanned and shredded the day I get them.

AmityNeon

If they're digital documents, there shouldn't be a need to delete them. PDFs are very small and can be filed away safely out of sight if necessary without an impact on storage.

For physical documents, I scan and then shred them. When I switched to paperless, coinciding with moving into a much smaller city apartment, I bought a heavy-duty P4 shredder (30-mins continuous running time) and duplex feeder scanner (100+ pages a minute). Within a week, I managed to churn through thousands and thousands of sheets, over 25 years of accumulated paperwork, and forever freed up valuable physical storage space.

To make digital filing simpler, documents were already collated chronologically by organisation per year, so I just scanned each group into single PDF files named in the format {Organisation} {Year}. I've referenced these archived files maybe twice a year, and only because it was convenient to do so, not out of strict necessity.

I now scan/shred about twice a month, and smartphone document capture is usually sufficient for the few letters I still receive. (Ever since that week of mountainous paper liberation, I truly despise receiving unnecessary impersonal paper correspondence.)

kaMelo

As @AmityNeon said, download any and all paperless statements, store and backup as part of your usual backup process.
Any paper statements, scan, store and backup as part of your usual backup process.

Never rely on any provider with whom you have a paperless account to maintain access to statements, always keep your own copy(ies) The chances of you ever needing one of those statements are miniscule but storage is cheap and you'll kick yourself if that one in a million chance of needing a statement happens and you failed to keep a copy.

GTR_King

I always keep paper statements will never go digital unless pushed! 

but need to get an auto shredder 80 sheets+ to get rid of all the extra copies I have to de clutter

But don’t like being all Digital

TheBanker

I keep digital copies for ever, in a cloud storage location.

My routine is that if I close an account, I download everything before closure. Sometimes they send the final statement by post which I scan and shred. 

At the end of the tax year when I do my self-assessment, I download everything related to open accounts and file it. Takes a couple of hours. Anything received by post during the year will be scanned and shredded. As well as bank statements I download my utility bills etc.

Insurance policy documents are saved to the cloud on receipt as are wage slips, my P60, receipts for important/large purchases etc.

I also have a car folder where I save servicing receipts etc so that I can demonstrate a service history when I sell it. 

I opt out of paper statements where possible, but some companies still send one occasionally. I always keep my most recent one (whether it's a bank statement, council tax bill, HMRC letter etc) just in case I need proof of address for a new account, although most providers accept internet copies these days. 

When I applied for my first mortgage, they needed proof of the source of my deposit. It had been through several savings accounts while it was being built up, so having all the statements organised made this a bit easier. I am not sure five year old water bills need to be retained, but it's less effort to retain them than to delete them. 

My dad used to save literally everything - even promotional flyers for credit cards and investments that he didn't apply for, every change to the terms and conditions, those little cards that they used to leave when they came to read the gas meter and you weren't home....

He didn't file things in a logical order and there were lots of documents still in their original unopened envelope. When he passed, it took me and my mum weeks to sort through it all.

Rob5342

My grandad was a bit like that, but not quite to that extent. When he died a few years ago and we cleared out his house we found things like receipts for a new record player stylus he bought in 1967.

Merlin139

Up until Lockdown I had statements, bills, wage slips for everything going back to when I was 18 in the early 80's. 

I then set about digitising and shredding. Strange to see a Gas bill from 1985 and see how little we were paying.

Now If I get paper copies I keep for a rolling12 months then shred. Anything digital is saved and filed by organisation and year then backed up. 

I spend about 5 minutes a month shredding and it goes in a little back then goes with the Blue recycling bin.