You all were so helpful with my last question, I decided to ask another!
Like I said before I'm really trying to streamline papers. What about student loan paperwork? I have two that I still owe money/payments for. What do I need to keep? I know I need the master promissary note, but my thinking is that's it. I get a monthly statement and I file them away, but do I need them?
I have/had another loan, but I paid that off soon after I graduated, is there really any need to keep that paperwork?
I guess I'm always afraid some way, some reason, somewhere down the line its going to pop up and I wont have paper work to prove anything. I don't know what I would be proving, but...
If you scan stuff into the computer is it still official? I was thinking I could do that.
Again what do you do?
Oh, is there a website anyone knows about that tells you all this stuff?
Personally I do not believe you need to keep each statement as long as you verify that your most recent activity was recorded correctly before shredding it. As long as your records match theirs there should be no issue.
I keep very little paperwork at all. Yearly tax returns, insurance policies, certified copies of all our birth certificates, ss cards and passports, that's pretty much it. All of our banking and other bills are done online, so any time I need a copy of a statement I just pull it up and print it out.
Oh, the other thing I keep is receipts/warranty info for the big stuff, car repairs, home appliances, computers, phones, etc.
I sign up for e-statements for everything. Nowadays, most everything is available online. I keep monthly notifications until the quarterly notification is available and keep those until the year end statement is available. As an example, for my son's college fund, I have the 2012 year end statement, 1st quarter 2013, and April's statement.
I keep notices of any loans that have been paid off, but I scan it into the computer. I have an external hard drive and most stuff I email to myself as a backup. No need for all that paper!
For all old loans, I keep the statement saying it was paid off.
For ongoing bills (including loans), I keep the most recent statement. As long as the ending amount on one matches the beginning amount on the next, I throw the previous one away. Same for bank statements, investment accounts, etc. And I save any end-of-the-year summaries for investment accounts.
This website helps a lot:
http://www.usa.gov/Topics/Money/Personal-Finance/Managing...
Boy, I don't think I have any student loan paperwork! I still owe on it, but I think I got rid of it when we moved. It's all on the computer.
I have our car titles and the paper work for our mortgage. Birth certs and the like, and tax stuff---yearly copies, medicinal expenses, etc. and copies of our wills. That's it. Everything else is digital.
