"Let everything be done decently and in order." (1 Cor. 14:40)
Tax season is right around the corner, and if you are anything like me, you have a forest worth of flattened trees neatly tucked away in your filing cabinet. But do we really have to save ALL that stuff? If you want to be prepared for an audit, you certainly need to save a good amount of your tax info, but here are a few sites detailing the exact time-frame you need to keep those other "not-so-important" documents.
Bankrate
Good Housekeeping
Clark Howard
You will find that different websites will promote varying time-frames as to when you can shred your bills, insurance paperwork, etc. Pick the ones you are most comfortable with - I tend to save my files for the longest time period that is suggested, just to be safe.
Make sure you print or write out the length of dates you decide to keep your financial records, and tape it to your filing cabinet. Come next year, or any other time you just cannot resist the declutter bug, you won't have to go searching for those lists again. :)
January is a great time to dive into your cabinets and shred those documents that are past their needed dates. It makes your files a lot smaller and neater, and gives you more room to use for the next couple years!
Have fun shredding!
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