How long to keep old paperwork and bills?

[Waffleswithhothoney]

I’m trying to do a massive clear out and I have so much old paperwork. Apart from keeping stuff for sentimental reasons, how long do you NEED to keep bills and statements etc for?

I have random paperwork relating to houses I’ve owned in the past but sold more than 10 years ago. Surely if anyone needed something they would have asked by now?

I’ll keep certain receipts/invoices for warranty or insurance reasons but a receipt for blinds in a property I sold in 2013? I’d like to bin those but my DH is telling me to hold on.

Or old tenancy agreements for a family members house which is now sold? We rented my GPs house out after their death until it was sold after probate but that’s years ago now.

What does everyone else do? Help!

Bin the blinds receipt and the tenancy agreements.

Do you have a scanner? If so scan anything you are in two minds about and store it in Dropbox + email it to yourself.

Here is a guide , I looked it up a while ago when having a clear out
www.alifemoreorganised.co.uk/post/how-long-to-keep-documents

I don't keep anything, bills are paid online, bank statements are online, receipts are online.
There's birth certificates lying about somewhere, but if lost, I can just reorder them.

Bin it all! Surely if you're ever asked for statements etc you can get copies. I keep receipts for "big stuff" for "a while" but would bin after a year

Anything relating to tax records e.g. proof of self assessment figures I’d keep for longer (I think it used to be HMRC could ask for 7yrs worth?)

Anything else I tend to keep 1-2 years’ worth, depending on importance.

Switch to paperless where you can - then it’s the company’s responsibility to keep it, adhere to data retention rules and provide a copy of you need it!

Otherwise, shred or burn. No regrets. Pretend you lost it in a house fire if anyone asks (no one ever asks!)

There's birth certificates lying about somewhere, but if lost, I can just reorder them.

This is fine if you know they’re in the house, but just bear in mind the fraud risk of someone getting hold of things and posing as you (happens a lot).

Keep anything about pensions forever. I’ve just needed something from one pension from 10 years ago as part of my claim for another pension. And with others that I paid into over 30 years ago I now need to claim and knowing what I actually signed up to in my 20’s for a few years now I’m nearly 60 is proving useful. Especially when they been through lots of different financial companies due to takeovers.

My neighbours are farm animals, it's fine. 😄

Pension companies should be sending out annual statements, so if you’ve not got one recently do check with them that your name and address are up to date on their records.

Do you need to keep every single pension communication, or just the last few. I just have 3 and do I need to keep 25 yrs of communication from both of them... or not? (I have at the moment but need to clear out paperwork. It's overwhelming me.)

OP would definitely bin paperwork for things you no longer own!

I’d just keep the last few personally as everything I need is on an app (including tracking investments daily and access to all policy literature).

Well possibly keeping absolutely everything was a bit over the top, I haven’t kept every annual statement. But definitely keep the original paperwork, and some of the most recent statements. The original paperwork can be importantly in long running financial things as there may be e.g. guarantees re minimum payouts included which might be ‘forgotten’. I’ve also made sure I can track the private pensions through the various reorganisations / ownership changes.

And when you take a pension there is information about how much of your allowance you’ve used up - that was what I needed from a pension that started paying out 10 years ago ( early as part of a redundancy deal) while filling in paperwork to claim another pension. I may have been able to get it from the pension company, but it would have been a lot more inconvenient.

i just have a box labelled pensions that it all lives in. I’ve got 7 pensions, a mixture of private, defined contributions and defined benefits, from nearly 40 years of working. 4 are v small but they will still give me a few thousand pounds.

I could scan some of it but I have more faith in the paperwork surviving than me managing to find out where I’d scanned and saved it in 10-20 years time, several laptops/storage devices/changes in the cloud…… though I do have them all listed on a spreadsheet with my reference / customer numbers.

Having just said that, I’ve realised I don’t have paper for the most recent 2 pensions, with Nest and Vanguard, because it has always been online and I can log in and see it all. Didn’t exist 30 plus years ago for the ones I’m talking about. My age is showing….