Going Paperless at Home

[Anonymous]

Over the last few years, I've tried to transition to a more paperless situation at home for things such as bank statements, credit card statements, utility bills, etc. Has anyone made a shift to paperless and later encountered problems, such as needing paper documents for an audit or a legal transaction? What's the best electronic storage option? Have you ever lost electronic copies and regretted that you didn't have the paper?

One area I haven't tackled is receipts. I'm still keeping the receipts from stores and restaurants and gas stations, and I'm wondering if I need to keep all of these and if so how can manage them. Should I scan them to pdf?

Please share your tips and tricks or horror stories. Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Over the last few years, I've tried to transition to a more paperless situation at home for things such as bank statements, credit card statements, utility bills, etc. Has anyone made a shift to paperless and later encountered problems, such as needing paper documents for an audit or a legal transaction? What's the best electronic storage option? Have you ever lost electronic copies and regretted that you didn't have the paper?

One area I haven't tackled is receipts. I'm still keeping the receipts from stores and restaurants and gas stations, and I'm wondering if I need to keep all of these and if so how can manage them. Should I scan them to pdf?

Please share your tips and tricks or horror stories. Thanks!

Wh . . . why?

I keep a receipt until it's clear I'm not returning an item, and then I pitch it. Why keep restaurant or gas receipts?

[Anonymous]

We are paperless for most bills (all the utility bills, etc). But I still like paper statements for investment accounts and tax documents.

[Anonymous]

Just set a calendar reminder every 6 mo-1 year to download any statements, brokerage purchases/sales etc of anything you might need. Save it on a drive. I would print out brokerage transactions though.

[Anonymous]

Paperless here. We download and store pdf statements.

[Anonymous]

I wouldn't do this because of the possibility of a cyber attack, and there have been growing warnings about one. Unless you download to a hard drive that you can always access. I wouldn't solely rely on internet storage like dropbox, google drive, etc.

You should have a copy of the most recent statement for each account, in the event banks can't recreate your balance. (It is likely that they eventually would be able to do so, but what if it takes a few months?)

I was pretty paper free, but the warnings made me rethink this approach. If you have to flee (for any kind of incident) be sure you have something you can grab -- a hard drive + computer, or a binder.

The only receipts I keep are for furniture or renovations. Any tax receipts can be filed with/tossed with the return.

[Anonymous]

Look at Organized 365 site and podcast. She is an organizer who had enough clients needing to evacuate their homes that she no longer recommends a filing cabinet. She has a binder system - you don't need to buy it, but you could consider applying it. Binders are portable.

[Anonymous]

Some stores thankfully let you just get an email receipt - CVS, Marshalls/TJ Maxx - are a few I can think of off hand

Something I learned the hard way - some credit cards and banks only hold statements for 15 - 18 mths and then they are no longer available to you online so if you are like me and were counting on being able to go back to long ago statements than make sure to check the policies for your bank and/or cards regarding their policies on this.

[Anonymous]

First let's talk about why you keep receipts from stores, restaurants and gas stations. What is the purpose?

I don't download statements ever. I never have. We are pretty paperless over here. Pay everything online.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Some stores thankfully let you just get an email receipt - CVS, Marshalls/TJ Maxx - are a few I can think of off hand

Something I learned the hard way - some credit cards and banks only hold statements for 15 - 18 mths and then they are no longer available to you online so if you are like me and were counting on being able to go back to long ago statements than make sure to check the policies for your bank and/or cards regarding their policies on this.

Why do you need credit card statements from 2 years ago? Honest question. I can't think of one reason.

[Anonymous]

OP: what is your motivation for doing this? I can see where it would make sense for someone highly mobile (e.g. a truck driver, a full-time RV couple, etc.), but I don't see much of a benefit to the average person. I'm curious as to what OP is trying to achieve.

I normally use the "cardboard box" method for statements and other stuff that I generally look at once and only save for reference. I toss them into a box. Most likely, they never get read again. The box ends up being a reverse-chronological-sorted version of everything, with anything that was important enough to need to be found, read, and re-filed put back near the top of the stack. This method does not scale well and would never work for a business, but it works for my pay stubs, bank statements, and receipts from large purchases. I don't normally save bills (electric, phone, etc.) once they are paid (unless there are tax implications), but I do have my bank statements with records of check payments.

I work in tech, but I prefer to keep my financial life on paper, mostly because I don't want to mix financial records in with my other electronic files and also because I don't want to forget to read or pay a bill due to a botched spam filter on my email account.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some stores thankfully let you just get an email receipt - CVS, Marshalls/TJ Maxx - are a few I can think of off hand

Something I learned the hard way - some credit cards and banks only hold statements for 15 - 18 mths and then they are no longer available to you online so if you are like me and were counting on being able to go back to long ago statements than make sure to check the policies for your bank and/or cards regarding their policies on this.

Why do you need credit card statements from 2 years ago? Honest question. I can't think of one reason.

It was a medical billing and insurance claim question. And yes it took almost 2 years for bill to arrive and the error to be figured out.

[Anonymous]

I do a mix.

I never keep receipts like from the gas station or CVS or restaurants.

I pay bills online, but I wait for the paper statement to arrive and that triggers me to go pay it.

I don't do auto bill pay, because I want to not forget about how much I'm spending.

I like having paper statements because if there is some issue, I can easily find old statements and look at it. Also, big thing, you can write on your paper statements! Notes or explanations, if you need them for some irregularity. (e.g. on April 1, 2022, spoke with Larla at ext. 345 and she said...")

So when a paper bill comes in the mail, I pay it online, throw it in a folder and maybe every three months or so, file it away in a binder. If it's a Visa or AMEX, I look it over with a highlighter and if anything is weird, I highlight it, leave on DH's chair in his office with a note to give back to me when cleared. Then it goes into the temporary folder.

I've got two binders: "2022 Income" and "2022 Bills" which also includes medical. I've got those rainbow tabs (I think Avery makes them)

Important: I get paper bank statments. This is because trying to go back and search online at my bank will only take you so far...I think three months.

This system does not take long and it ensures you have your records at your fingertips.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP: what is your motivation for doing this? I can see where it would make sense for someone highly mobile (e.g. a truck driver, a full-time RV couple, etc.), but I don't see much of a benefit to the average person. I'm curious as to what OP is trying to achieve.

I normally use the "cardboard box" method for statements and other stuff that I generally look at once and only save for reference. I toss them into a box. Most likely, they never get read again. The box ends up being a reverse-chronological-sorted version of everything, with anything that was important enough to need to be found, read, and re-filed put back near the top of the stack. This method does not scale well and would never work for a business, but it works for my pay stubs, bank statements, and receipts from large purchases. I don't normally save bills (electric, phone, etc.) once they are paid (unless there are tax implications), but I do have my bank statements with records of check payments.

I work in tech, but I prefer to keep my financial life on paper, mostly because I don't want to mix financial records in with my other electronic files and also because I don't want to forget to read or pay a bill due to a botched spam filter on my email account.

OP here. My motivation is to have less stuff. We literally have YEARS of paper, and I know we do not need most of it. We did a partial purge a couple years ago, but there is still a lot of old paper, and it's a nonstop issue because it keeps coming. My concern about being paperless is losing the electronic copies or needing the paper for some reason.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I do a mix.

I never keep receipts like from the gas station or CVS or restaurants.

I pay bills online, but I wait for the paper statement to arrive and that triggers me to go pay it.

I don't do auto bill pay, because I want to not forget about how much I'm spending.

I like having paper statements because if there is some issue, I can easily find old statements and look at it. Also, big thing, you can write on your paper statements! Notes or explanations, if you need them for some irregularity. (e.g. on April 1, 2022, spoke with Larla at ext. 345 and she said...")

So when a paper bill comes in the mail, I pay it online, throw it in a folder and maybe every three months or so, file it away in a binder. If it's a Visa or AMEX, I look it over with a highlighter and if anything is weird, I highlight it, leave on DH's chair in his office with a note to give back to me when cleared. Then it goes into the temporary folder.

I've got two binders: "2022 Income" and "2022 Bills" which also includes medical. I've got those rainbow tabs (I think Avery makes them)

Important: I get paper bank statments. This is because trying to go back and search online at my bank will only take you so far...I think three months.

This system does not take long and it ensures you have your records at your fingertips.

But why? There's no need to do any of this.