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digging out
Oct. 11th, 2004 07:43 pmso i got started in on my great paperwork project. i have mountains of papers dating back into antiquity. all of my phone bills and credit card statements and receipts and god only knows what else. all of it! did i mention i'm a tiny bit of a pack rat? i have finally accepted that really i don't need to keep all of my credit card receipts from every transaction i've ever made since my very first credit card. i mean, what kind of freak am i? i've been meaning to get to this for... a very long time.
step 1 was going through all of my already filed credit card statements, pulling the statements out of the envelopes, and tossing all the receipts in a "to shred" bag. (i haven't quite made it to the zen state of being able to actually toss out all of my old statements, but it's a start right?)
step 2 was sorting through a huge pile of investment related mail and tossing most of it into either the recycle or shred bag.
this past weekend i balanced my checkbook, which i hadn't done for 3 months, then decided to get more serious with the mountains. i pulled out the box of unfiled crap and started sorting through it. first, separate the piles. pacbell & sbc here, pg&e over there, credit card statements over here, old statements from long closed investment accounts... into the shred bag you go! 401a from my student jobs at cal? that thing has been rolled over three times already! taos paperwork? you're outta here! freedom i can almost taste you!
tonight i continue the liberation. first i must decide an important question though. what is the cutoff? how far back do i keep and file? obviously i don't need all of my utility bills from time immemorial, but certainly i should keep some recent history right? so tell me, what's your cutoff?
step 1 was going through all of my already filed credit card statements, pulling the statements out of the envelopes, and tossing all the receipts in a "to shred" bag. (i haven't quite made it to the zen state of being able to actually toss out all of my old statements, but it's a start right?)
step 2 was sorting through a huge pile of investment related mail and tossing most of it into either the recycle or shred bag.
this past weekend i balanced my checkbook, which i hadn't done for 3 months, then decided to get more serious with the mountains. i pulled out the box of unfiled crap and started sorting through it. first, separate the piles. pacbell & sbc here, pg&e over there, credit card statements over here, old statements from long closed investment accounts... into the shred bag you go! 401a from my student jobs at cal? that thing has been rolled over three times already! taos paperwork? you're outta here! freedom i can almost taste you!
tonight i continue the liberation. first i must decide an important question though. what is the cutoff? how far back do i keep and file? obviously i don't need all of my utility bills from time immemorial, but certainly i should keep some recent history right? so tell me, what's your cutoff?
