{"id":413,"date":"2006-08-03T06:00:36","date_gmt":"2006-08-03T13:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/getrichslowly.org\/blog\/2006\/08\/03\/which-financial-records-to-keep-and-how-long-to-keep-them\/"},"modified":"2019-10-10T19:51:26","modified_gmt":"2019-10-11T02:51:26","slug":"which-financial-records-to-keep-and-how-long-to-keep-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/which-financial-records-to-keep-and-how-long-to-keep-them\/","title":{"rendered":"Which financial records to keep (and how long to keep them)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An AskMetafilter user wonders <a href=\"https:\/\/ask.metafilter.com\/43537\/Receipts-to-keep-or-not-to-keep\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">how long to keep receipts<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I have been keeping all of my receipts for some time now. Every day, I enter them into my money tracking system (presently just a text file where I capture date, payee and amount). Then I file the receipts away in folders by month. My question: <strong>does it do me any good to save the receipts, or is having the data good enough?<\/strong> [&#8230;] I&#8217;ve never had to bring out individual receipts for tax purposes before, but my understanding is that if I got audited, having all my receipts would be very helpful. Is that true?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Bankrate has an excellent table summarizing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bankrate.com\/finance\/personal-finance\/how-long-to-keep-financial-records.aspx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">how long to keep financial records<\/a>. To summarize:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Keep any <strong>tax-related records<\/strong> for seven years.<\/li>\n<li>Keep records of <strong>IRA contributions<\/strong> permanently.<\/li>\n<li>Keep quarterly <strong>retirement\/savings plan statements<\/strong> until you receive an annual statement. If the numbers match, shred the quarterlies and keep the annual summaries permanently.<\/li>\n<li>Shred unimportant <strong>bank records<\/strong> after one year; keep the rest permanently.<\/li>\n<li>Keep <strong>brokerage statements<\/strong> until you sell the securities.<\/li>\n<li>Most of the time you can shred <strong>bills<\/strong> once you get a cancelled check. Keep bills for big items permanently.<\/li>\n<li>Keep <strong>credit card receipts<\/strong> to reconcile with your statements, then keep the statements for seven years.<\/li>\n<li>Easy and must do habit -get a copy of your <a href=\"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/free-credit-report\/\">free credit report<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Paycheck stubs<\/strong> should be kept until you receive your end-of-year tax statements.<\/li>\n<li>Keep <strong>house records<\/strong> permanently. (Some can be held for less time, but I think it&#8217;s wise to keep them all.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Remember: If possible, <strong>shred all financial documents<\/strong> when you get rid of them. A program such as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/quicken-2017\/\">Quicken<\/a> can help you track and manage your finances effectively without leaving a paper trail.<\/p>\n[Bankrate: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bankrate.com\/finance\/personal-finance\/how-long-to-keep-financial-records.aspx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">What financial records to keep, how long to keep them<\/a>]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An AskMetafilter user wonders <a href=\"https:\/\/ask.metafilter.com\/43537\/Receipts-to-keep-or-not-to-keep\">how long to keep receipts<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>I have been keeping all of my receipts for some time now. Every day, I enter them into my money tracking system (presently just a text file where I capture date, payee and amount). Then I file the receipts away in folders by month. My question: <strong>does it do me any good to save the receipts, or is having the data good enough?<\/strong> [&#8230;] I&#8217;ve never had to bring out individual receipts for tax purposes before, but my understanding is that if I got audited, having all my receipts would be very helpful. Is that true?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Bankrate has an excellent table summarizing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bankrate.com\/finance\/personal-finance\/how-long-to-keep-financial-records.aspx\">how long to keep financial records<\/a>. To summarize:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3287,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[481],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3287"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}