Home paperwork/filing system how do you organise yours?

[pinkmook]

Hi as the title suggests I need some help organising my home filing. By that I mean all my bills/bank statements/tv licence/ bits of paperwork relating to DC/employment/car tax/insurance etc etc.

Mine is in about 4 A4 files at the moment and just constantly seems to be in a mess.

I never know how long to keep things and live in fear of shredding something I will need when we come to re-mortagae etc.

Does anyone have any miracle/easy ways of organising this stuff as I am crap at it

TIA

We have a concertina file for everything to do with the flat (mortgage, insurance, utilities, blah blah blah), another one for the money stuff (bank accounts, shares, tax, payslips, pensions, life insurance) and another one for personal papers (passports, birth certificates, DD's vaccination booklet, marriage certificate, wills).

They all live in a cupboard. I chuck paid bills and statements and so on into the cupboard on top of the files, and then about once a quarter I sit down and file it all.

Personally I find the key is not getting too optimistic about what you're REALLY going to do. I know full well that I am not going to file every paid phone bill immediately, but having a sort of holding pen for papers awaiting filing means they don't get lost.

At the moment, I have a (well three actually, in my defense I am a teacher!) of those filing cabinets with drawers. I have a drawer for 'insurance' where I will separate the individual documents into plastic wallets. In the 'driving' drawer I have plastic wallets (just a simple sleeve thing)for DVLA, MOT, etc.

However, at the moment, I am trying to drastically reduce the amount of paper I have and move these [the cabinets] to school.

Therefore, I would first suggest looking at how you can reduce your paper before you look at filing it. So, switch over to paperless billing and statements that you can then just see online wherever possible.

With the remaining paper how about just getting the plastic sleeves (I'm not talking about the ones with holes to file in a ring binder - just very simple ones that are open at the top and the side that you can slide things into easily), and putting identifying stickers (not essential as the wallets are transparent) on them, and then just putting them in a box file?

Oh and adopt a 'one in one out' policy.

Filing cabints with hanging files then plastic wallets with stick on labels inside each hanging file.

The drawers are labelled. Personal Finance, House, Children, etc . The hanging files inside each drawer are then labelled Pensions, ISAs, Bank, Household Bills, etc. Then the plastic wallets inside the hanging files are labelled Current Account, Deposit Account, Gas, Water, Phone, etc.

Thanks for the replies - how long do you keep utility bills for? And wage slips, mortgage info? I've known some people keep all their mortgage deal info from the first time they got a house "just in case" but I dont know what the definitive "right" amount of time to keep such things? If there even is a "definitive right amount"

ninedragons - I think my personlity type means I am more likely to follow our way of doing things and have a sort out quarterly rather than vowing to do it more regularly then just recoiling in horror at the pile of stuff after a year so thanks for that tip I will try the "holding pen" idea

your not our

I think the guidance is seven years for anything pertaining to money and tax, one year for utilities.

But don't forget you can scan then chuck. Then you can keep everything indefinitely. In fact, if I had a scanner at home I'd probably scan and chuck bills immediately.

never thought of the scanning thing. Good idea. Thanks again

pinkmook - at a minimum records shoudl be kept 7 years. I tend to keep ours at least 20 years and believe it or not both me and DW were asked to produce our employment contracts and tax records from 1987 the other day.

Something like a mortgage, pensions, bank statements, insurance contracts and tax returns (plus supporting material behind the figures in the returns) and all correspondence with the tax office we have kept for 30 years.

Beenbeta - I have had this argument with DH before. He thinks we should chuck everything away but its always a nightmare when we come to remortgage etc. Thanks for the advice