Paranoia

blue.peter

If memory serves, it's nearly fifty years since I received an NI number card through the post. Being me, I immediately memorised that number. I knew that I'd be needing it. And I'm glad I did: although I put the card in my wallet for safekeeping, it was lost within two or three years. My pocket was picked in a Birmingham pub in 1978.

Because the NI number card was lost, I was always worried that my memory of the number was wrong, and that my NI contributions would get credited to the wrong person. I therefore kept every payslip, every P60 and every P45 that I ever received. I thought that I might get to state pension age and find that I needed to be able to prove to the DHSS/DSS/DWP that I'd paid all those NI contributions and qualified for my state pension.

Similarly, I've kept all sorts of other paperwork related to my employment, various private pensions and the bills/receipts for pretty much everything else, "just in case it's ever needed". I've got half a dozen Really Useful Boxes full of suspension-filed paperwork. (And another one that relates to my parents. Half of it is the stuff generated by administering my father's estate, and the other half relates to my mother - my eldest sister and I are her attorneys.)

Of course, I've now reached state pension age (well, I will in November), and never needed most of that paperwork. My private pensions are in payment, and everything seems to have gone very smoothly indeed. I claimed my state pension in late July, and I've had a letter from the DWP promising that they'll pay it to me, starting a week or two after my birthday. (The letter specifies the amount and payment dates of the first two payments.)

I might not have needed to retain all that paperwork, but one of my sisters wishes that she'd done the same. She had an awful time claiming her NHS pension. Her former employer, a hospital, had been merged into a larger one, and her records had been lost in the process. Her life would have been easier if she still had her historic paperwork. It was all resolved satisfactorily in the end, but it was a lot of worry and hassle that she could have done without.

I'm glad that I kept all the stuff that I have, even if most of it was never needed.

(I'm now are that the DWP periodically checks to ensure that employers are crediting NI conts to the right number for their employees, and corrects errors. But I didn't know that when I started out.)

400ixl

Always worth keeping some documented paperwork. Although these days digitising it and storing it online saves all of the storage space.

Many things like your NI number are now accessible by having an online government account which will also show all of your NI yearly accrual so you can keep a check on what information they have on you and your projected entitlements. 

blue.peter

400ixl said:

Always worth keeping some documented paperwork. Although these days digitising it and storing it online saves all of the storage space.

Many things like your NI number are now accessible by having an online government account which will also show all of your NI yearly accrual so you can keep a check on what information they have on you and your projected entitlements. 

All true. But, of course, these options weren't available when I started out. And I really haven't got the time or inclination to change a system that (a) works and (b) would involve that much scanning and shredding.

badmemory

I have kept every P60 I have ever had, so 50 years worth & only disposed of my pay slips once I had checked that they added up to the P60.  That is just sensible.  As for storing them in the cloud, well clouds get blown away.  You can bet as soon as you need access in 40 years time they will be long gone.

blue.peter

badmemory said:

As for storing them in the cloud, well clouds get blown away.  You can bet as soon as you need access in 40 years time they will be long gone.

Yes. Which is why I keep my main data store on my desktop computer, backed up daily to my own RAID server downstairs, and that's backed up to:

(a) a second RAID server (weekly); and

(b) cloud storage (daily).

So four copies of the important stuff exist. With the cloud stored stuff only needed in the event of my home's destruction, and itself easily replaced if it does get blown away. I'm only in trouble if my home is destroyed and the cloud fails at the same time.

Paranoid? Moi?

400ixl

badmemory said:

As for storing them in the cloud, well clouds get blown away.  You can bet as soon as you need access in 40 years time they will be long gone.

They don't just magically disappear, if one closes down (but if you use one of the big providers that is unlikely) you just move it all to another provider. As simple as a couple of clicks.

Ideally you also keep them stored locally and on a couple of a cloud providers. 

Far safer than if you are unfortunate to have a house fire.  

400ixl

blue.peter said:

All true. But, of course, these options weren't available when I started out. And I really haven't got the time or inclination to change a system that (a) works and (b) would involve that much scanning and shredding.

True, but been available for 20+ years now.

It looked like your thread was to advise people to keep important documents, so a start now if you haven't been, which would be better started as online, not offline.

Wyndham

I've kept every P60 I've ever had. I was in a particular job from 2003 to 2007, but when I checked my online NI contributions record, it was showing that I hadn't contributed enough for 2005. As this was right in the middle of the job, and the other years were credited, I mailed them, with a copy of the P60 to say that I thought it was incorrect. Suffice to say, it is now correct.

I did this last year, so a huge gap between the job and when I queried it. But as I had the paperwork it was all sorted out without too much trouble.

blue.peter

400ixl said:

It looked like your thread was to advise people to keep important documents, so a start now if you haven't been...

Yes, it was. It started out along the lines of "go on, have a laugh at me, keeping all sorts of stuff unnecessarily", but then I remembered my sister's problems, and thought "no, hold on, it's good practice, perhaps others might be better off doing it".

400ixl said:

...which would be better started as online, not offline.

Arguable. I really don't care how other people retain stuff. It''s entirely a matter of personal preference. You're right in that scan and shred is a viable option for anyone who favours electronic storage (as you appear to). It certainly has advantages. But there are still some folk who prefer to keep masses of old papers. It might be old-fashioned, but it does still work.

blue.peter

Wyndham said:

I did this last year, so a huge gap between the job and when I queried it. But as I had the paperwork it was all sorted out without too much trouble.

Good for you!

Nebulous2

I memorised some key numbers in my youth,  NI, driving licence and my nurse registration number being the most obvious ones, and I've never doubted my ability to recall them accurately. 

My paperwork is a bit chaotic, but I keep a lot of stuff, much to the frustration of my wife. Much of it is entirely useless, and I have occasionally spent a day or so searching my loft for something I want. Fortunately that hasn't happened for a long time. 

Online I'm much more organised, filing documents with descriptive names and dating the file name. I can usually find what I want fairly readily, if it is there.

I've embraced electronic documents and have stopped paper statements whenever I've been offered the opportunity.  

I use Microsoft office, pay an annual subscription - get a discounted code, rather than auto-renewing,  which brings a terabyte of data. Possibly not very MSE, but having used it a lot at work it is familiar.

I've tended to trust Microsoft cloud, but do have a lot of documents on my laptop, and have them all backed up to a portable SSD.