This week’s tips are aimed at helping you better organize your financial documents, and today I’m answering one of the most common questions clients ask me about their financial documents - what should I keep and what should I shred? 

The good news is that you can probably get rid of more documents than you might realize. With that said, here’s some guidance on what you can shred and when:

• Bills - go ahead and shred these when the payment clears 
• Credit card and bank account statements - You can shred these after reviewing and verifying that everything looks correct, especially if you have online access to your accounts.
• Paycheck stubs can be shredded after you verify the stubs match your W-2 and there are no other discrepancies
• Investment account statements - your monthly or quarterly statements can be shredded after you receive your annual summary after the close of the year. This one is a big one, because I see clients who keep every monthly statement going back 5, 10, or 20 years, and it’s really not necessary. And when each statement is several pages long, it will really free up space in your files if you just keep the year-end summary. 

And these days with virtually everything available online anyways, and easy ways to store documents securely in the cloud, you don’t need to keep most of those account statements you still might be getting in the mail. 

Once you know what you can shred, you can also get in the habit of shredding more often, so you don’t store things that you don’t need. 

Today, my challenge is for you is to start purging anything you’ve been hanging on to that you don’t need. Have a little shredding party and experience the profound cleansing euphoria that happens when you rid yourself of unnecessary documents! 

That’s it for today. Thanks for listening! My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the One Minute Retirement Tip. 

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