Ditch the Monthly Paper Statements?
In a futile attempt to organize myself, I was wondering what I should do with 5+ years worth of credit card, bank account, and other accounts monthly statements.
For someone that constantly advocate computer online-based banking, I have quite a large amount of monthly paper statements.
These days the companies are always trying to get us to go paper-less. It does save them quite a bit afterall. I still haven't gone with paper-less statements though. Although I can download each of my monthly statements and save them on my computer, I honestly don't trust my computer, even though I maintain it quite well (I also mess with it too much). I was thinking I can download and store them onto CDs, but I don't know about that too.
The minute they let me retrive all my statements online, (not just the previous 6 months), I'll go paper-less. Until then, the stacking of evenlopes continue.
They probably won't ever do that though. I once visited Bank of America's LA County processing center. If I recall correctly, after 6 months they store, compress, and archive the datas. After 15 years, they dump them. It's not easy nor cheap to keep them available forever online. (Thats why you'll need to pay to retrieve some statement from years back). Thinking about this now reminded me of those huge rolls of paper, colums of machines to process them, and the guys they were paying to stuff those envelopes. Definitely not cheap.
Just as a good backup, I think I'll go ahead and start downloading these statements and storing them onto CDs. I'll probably do a 6 months to 12 months interval for the CDs. Does anyone have any other ideas?
On a completely different subject... to the right you'll see a picture of Sunset Beach, which you can find on the North Shore of Oahu island. Click on it to see the full picture. Unfortunately for us, a huge patch of cloud soon came and blocked the sunset... (do'h!)
In either case, what a wonderful paper-less beach.
8 Comments:
I've been using my gmail account to make sure I have a backup archive of my variety of eStatements - tack on a label or two (ala 'AMEX' and 'eStatement' for my American Express bills) and I can find them from anywhere. And more importantly, when my machine eventually dies, I can just log in to gmail from my new machine and be assured all my statements are available should I ever need 'em.
hey thats a great idea. I doubt the gmail servers will go down easily, and they do have 1 gig worth of storage..
thanks for the suggestion!
Actually, you may find at the bottom of your inbox, it may say something like 2236mb instead of 1000mb- even better!
ah dur. i forgot they upped it to 2.2 gig+
woot.
Dude, five years? I keep mine for a year, then tax-time I get rid of the previous year's credit card statements and other bills. The only thing I keep is pay stubs and my primary checking accounts for potential tax audit purposes.
I've been trying to go paperless gradually too. I download everything once a month, and backup to USB thumbdrive. Every 6 months, I burn onto CD. I admit, I've not been burning CDs for over a year now, and I'm usually a month or two behind downloading online statements.
well I probably have an amount most 22 years old.. I only keep the ones with actual acvitities on them. But yeah its about 3-5 years worth in certain cards.
I probably dont need them for that long. lol.
but yeah its hard to keep up the rountine.
one of these days it'll be easy enough I guess. one click, download, automatically burn or store onto selected drive.
I figure if I get a system going, it'll be easier.
I'll keep the paper ones for a year, and backup all the rest forever. lol.
it'll be a good journal anyway, just to look back years later and realize what silly stuff I spend money on.
If you want to be really paranoid, burn duplicate CDs and store them in a safety deposit box.
A good time frame is five years storage. Statute of limitations for creditors is 4 years, IRS is 3 years, and some state tax returns is 4 years. Longer term assets like stocks and real estate need longer record periods.
hmm.. 4 years? for some reason, I kept thinking its 7 years.
I just checked for California, and you're right, its 4 years.
weird... now this I didn't know, oral agreements are 2 years. that's a bit short.
thanks for the info!
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