MICHELLE SMALENBERGER, CFP®

It’s spring and we naturally think of spring cleaning! We’ve been inside most of the winter and you may start to see the piles of stuff climb up the walls. So, now you’re ready to get rid of some of that stuff. Let’s talk through a couple areas of financial documents you need to keep and some ways to organize them.

The first area are “Functional” documents. These are documents that you may get on a regular basis. These can range from statements for bank accounts or credit card statements to receipts.

They could also be statements from health costs you’ve incurred. These could be put in a file folder which is labeled by the month. Then at the end of the year you can take and compile them all in order and clip them together to serve as documents that can be easily found if needed.

You could also take that stack of documents and scan them in if you already have a good structure for electronic filing. The second area are “Structural” documents. These are documents you get one time that will be applicable to your situation for maybe thirty years. So it’s a much longer period of time that you need to keep it readily available.

Examples of these would be life insurance policies, estate planning documents, or even tax returns for a number of years. We help our clients with keeping these documents organized. If you’ve realized that you have paper you need to get rid of we want to help you!

We’re hosting a Shredding event soon where you can have your paper shredded on site. Visit our website to see all the details! We look forward to helping you get organized during your spring cleaning!

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