This article discusses what kinds of financial records people should keep or discard. There are certain documents that should be kept permanently and in their original form “including marriage, birth, adoption, citizenship and death certificates; diplomas and transcripts; veteran’s papers; health records (immunizations and surgeries); Social Security cards.” People should also keep and update important estate planning documents. Certain documents that will only need to be kept for a certain period of time can be stored digitally online. It is a good idea to purchase an accordion file folder with tabs for each month to deal with documents with term dates that need to be replaced regularly. The documents that should be shredded are those that are either not important for keeping or can be easily retrievable by some other means.
See Eleanor Blayney, What Financial Records to Keep – and What to Shred, The Wall Street Journal, April 6, 2016.
Special thanks to Brian Cohan (Attorney at Law, Law Offices of Brian J. Cohan, P.C.) for bringing this article to my attention.
