February 22, 2013
Dear Everyone:
As a Records Manager, I’ve been asked this question many, many times:
“How long should I keep my records?”
The answer, of course, is brutally simple:
“It depends.”
What kind of records are you talking about?
If they’re business records, which state(s) do you do business in?
Are you working in just the
United States or other countries?
Here’s a really easy “rule of thumb”.
Find out which state/country has the longest
retention
requirement for your kind of business and keep all your records for that
length of time, regardless of which state or country you’re actually in.
And don’t forget local municipal and county regulations.
Oh, you’re just asking about your “personal” aka “household” records?
Like the phone bills, credit card statements and mortgage
payments?
A tax attorney at work told me something many decades ago:
The
Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has three (3) years in which
to audit your
tax return and all supporting documentation.
Which means, simply, keep your tax returns (and all
supporting documentation) for
three years.
Well, you may ask: What’s
“supporting documentation”?
Whatever the IRS says it is.
So, really easy “rule of thumb”:
Keep everything for three years.
Which is pretty simple and easy to follow.
For a while, I used to keep those expanding file pockets, the kind with
slots for January through December.
Write the year on the outside with a big marking pen.
Drop things in according to which month it came in.
Keep it for the current year, plus three more years.
Then toss it in the garbage.
Pretty simple and easy.
Then, one year, I tossed the four-year-old file in the dumpster and
realized, on my way back to the house, that the
registration for my car
was sitting in it. “The Pink
Slip” as we used to call it.
Oops. Luckily, the dumpster
was almost full and I didn’t have to climb all the way in to retrieve
the folder.
After that, I got a little more careful about tossing old records.
And this was long before the specter of “dumpster diving” and
other means of “identity theft” arose.
These days, of course, I wouldn’t dream of “tossing” old records
without thoroughly shredding them first.
Don’t have a shredder? Got a
two-year-old? I’m told a
two-year-old is as good as a shredder at destroying anything that needs
destroying, in a wholesome sort of way, of course.
In any case, February is a good time of year to shred and dispose of old
bills, credit card statements, etc., because it makes room for the new
year that just started. And
Friday is a good day in my neighborhood to shred because they empty the
recycle bins first thing in the morning.
By evening, they’ll all be full again.
Just make sure you go through all those “household records” and pull out
important things like the car registration, the warranty on the new
dishwasher you got two years ago, and so on.
We in Records Management call that “culling”.
Love, as always,
Pete
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