5 Ways to Keep Household Financial Documents Organized

Let’s face it, staying organized for most people is a pain in the butt, especially when it comes to bills, documents and records.  It’s hard to tell what you need to save or what’s superfluous in your record keeping.  Here’s how to keep it organized as it flows through your mailbox instead of just letting it stack up.

1.  Use your computer.  When it comes to documents that you can’t download via the internet, use a scanner and store what could be a giant stack of paperwork in one tiny folder on your hard drive.  Things like pay stubs or monthly credit card statements, medical bills, can all be scanned and saved to your computer.                                                                                                                                                                                                           

2.  Toss documents the safe way.  With identity theft being such a huge threat to millions of people a year, it’s time to invest in a shredder.  Costing a lot less than you realize (starting around $50), you could potentially save yourself thousands in losses from the careless tossing of personal documents.

3.  Not a shoebox, but a file.  Having your documents organized for tax time is so important.  Charitable donations and business expenses need to be documented and saved to reference come January.  Again, you can scan and save to your computer in a specialized file for just this purpose.  Lots of times you can use an app to scan receipts as well.

4.  Using a digital strategy to keep your paperwork at a minimum requires back up.  Make sure to save all of your documents to an external hard drive or flash drive depending on the size of your data. 

5.  Use old binders.  You can make them pretty, or just use some of last year’s school supplies.  Use these binders to keep around annual statements in case of an audit.  You don’t need your monthly statements.

You can find a way to make organizing easy for you.  The point is to review what you need to hold on to or let go on a somewhat regular basis, usually monthly or quarterly.  If your annual statement comes in, you can throw away the quarterly report.  Just make sure there is a secure place to keep passwords and account information in case you forget and communicate with your partner in the event they need access to the information.