How do you sort your paperwork?

[MrsHende]

We're having a 'where is the insurance certificate?' panic induced tidy up.

How do you have your paperwork sorted? Ring binders? Files? Piles?!

Also, how long do you keep things like phone/utility bills?

Do you have paperwork relating to previous cars/houses?

Anyone with paperwork OCD who'd like to come and sort us out would be very, very welcome .

3 ring binders hold all our paperwork.
1 for work (contracts, handbooks etc)
1 for house: bills, insurance, mortgage, other house invoices like boiler service.
1 for personal: payslips and P60s, tax credit stuff, car insurance and log books, birth certificates, exam certificates. Dog paperwork also in here.
I used to have suspended files in a cabinet but prefer the folders, easier to locate stuff.

I don't have many paper bills these days so have a few years worth in the house file but as it gets full I have a purge. Payslips are put away into the loft if full as they have to be kept for 7yrs or something like that.

A4 folders and plastic A4 wallets.

ATM I'm in a temporary rented house and keep everything in one plastic folder including bills. I don't have a car.

I still have the paperwork for the purchase or sale of every house I've owned/bought/sold going back over 20 years, but not the bills, in plastic or cardboard A4 folders. I mostly keep bills until I have a sort out and then I shred the older ones, so it varies from having bills going back a few years to having bills going back about 25 years. I keep bank statements in a ringbinder and when it's full I shred the oldest year.

Until last year I owned my own home for years. I had 2 plastic box files with dividers and I had sections for different bills, insurances, pensions and even things like opticians and dentists (receipts, prescriptions). When I had a partner with a car, we had a section for the car and kept the latest documents (insurance, MOT, tax) in a plastic wallet at the front of that section so they were easy to spot. I keep all old household insurance documents. They might be relevant if you have a claim for something that started before your current insurance policy, like subsidence.

If I have something that's not current but ought to be kept it might all go in an A4 folder or plastic wallet or when the paperwork is excessive, I put the older stuff in there and the newest in the box file divider.

One thing I keep meaning to do but don't but think would be good is either to take out the oldest year of bills for shredding every January or take out the oldest bill when putting away the one you've just paid, so one in, one out. I'm not at all sure about how long you should keep things for.

Thank you so much.

Has anyone seen a website with any advice about filing and how long to keep paperwork?

Thanks again.

Shameless bump!

There's some useful stuff on the hmrc website about how long to keep stuff:

www.hmrc.gov.uk/taxcredits/start/claiming/get-started/paperwork.htm

and

www.hmrc.gov.uk/sa/record-keeping.htm