Household paperwork.

[Dollydewdrop21]

Our household paperwork needs some serious attention and I am looking for some inspiration please. How do you file your things, do you use a lever arch file or a concertina file with different dividers? Do you keep 3 months worth of bank statements etc and then shred the rest? Any useful tips would be great. Thank you.

Martin Lewis recommends keeping anything financial for ever. So I have a large ring binder with dividers, and anything from the previous 12 months is in there, after that it goes with older stuff in other ring binders if financial, and shredded if not.

Anything financial forever?!?! Why, when you can access everything online? Have I missed something?

I have a filing cabinet crammed full of shit dating back to the last century

Thank you ladies. Just trying to motivate myself for this 'fun' task! It will be a job for tomorrow. Keeping everything financial forever sounds like a massive task!

Clear the floor and make piles to do it.

I keep key hard copies of financial stuff maybe not forever but certainly at least seven years (for HMRC purposes) or until it is paid off. Eg I would keep the original loan agreement or mortgage T&C, but not the monthly statements (which I access on line). Once paid off, I keep the final bill which normally confirms that nothing more is owed and has the account details on just in case, then the rest gets shredded.

Do you all file things when they come in or let them pile up? My problem is letting them pile up and if ppl come round do a quick tidy by putting them in a drawer and forgetting about them so I have drawers with random paperwork....

Things can get lost in the ether sometimes.

I have piles as well as a filing cabinet because the filing cabinet is crammed full of stuff I don't need.
Its too daunting to tackle.

I operate on the 'digital by default' principle, so anything which can be done electronically is. Less paper in = less to deal with. For paper which does arrive, I use Evernote and take photos of pieces of paper and then bung the originals as far as possible.

I keep financial records (e.g. yearly tax statements about my bank accounts, not necessarily the transaction records themselves) for seven years.

For the rest of the paper I have to keep, I just have a folder for each year. If I try to be any more organised about a filing system than that (e.g. lever arch files, tab dividers) I just won't do it. So a year file is good enough to track most things down. Most critical documents go in the fire safe.

I keep a rolling file of paper documents which might be useful, e.g. recent bank statements so I have them to hand if I need to prove identity. Then they get binned on rotation.

Not all suppliers provide unlimited archived bills on line- as I found to my alarm looking for EE invoices for my accounts (£3.50 per copy!).

I have a concertina folder and file everything by month. Being honest- what I really do is let it all build up on hall table then tackle it when it begins to annoy me.

blog.moneysavingexpert.com/2013/08/12/dont-throw-bank-statements-away-after-six-years/

I like the idea of taking photos of things as I just can't keep up with all the paperwork coming into this house. What is Evernote?

I have roughly one binder per year with bank statements and such.

Evernote - or alternatives such as Google Keep and Microsoft's OneNote allow you to capture and organise notes about anything you like. One of my main uses for Evernote is their Webclipper, which allows you to grab a page whilst you're browsing, so you don't have to rack your brains about 'I saw that interesting article about [x] or those great shoes or whatever, where was it?'

Thanks tribpot, so could I put photos of things I've taken in there too?

Yes, that's right - on the mobile app you can take a photo actually from the app (it has a special function for photographing documents) or you can attach a photo like you could attach a PDF or Word document. You can also record sound notes (so if you want to make a quick voice memo), to do lists etc.

The free account with Evernote is less generous than it used to be, I think the main difference is you can no longer email notes in, but other than that it's worth a try.

I've got an app called office lens, I take photos of everything and then shred them and back everything up online

I have a wall hanging magazine holder / post tray thing with 5 sections. Incoming post, outgoing post, to be filed, school related, and home improvements (we've had lots of building work done recently) I try to open post as it comes in, but if it's not urgent and I'm rushed, it goes into incoming. I try to clear this at least once a week, and I do the filing whenever it starts looking a bit nasty. It means that I don't have to do much regularly, but I can always find things.

For the filing, I have one large magazine file, with 9 plastic wallets in it to store things by category. I tend to save up a years worth, until I get the summary covering that year, then I ditch the statements and file the summary.

I like the idea of just having an electronic-only copy of all but the most recent (would always keep 2 current bills for proof of address) but I know how badly organised my photos are. I've started sorting them out, but it's taking an age. I just can't bear adding any more to the pile of digital images to name and file correctly!