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There are many books on basic home organization and document retention for tax and personal purposes. 95% of what comes in the mail can go right to the trash. A

by gregjor 16y ago

There are many books on basic home organization and document retention for tax and personal purposes. 95% of what comes in the mail can go right to the trash. All of my bills and insurance documents are already available on the various web sites so there's no reason to keep them or file them for posterity. Same with bank statements. Even with nearly 50 years behind me, house, three kids, etc. I can easily keep all important paper documents in a single plastic file box. I cull old stuff out every year while doing my taxes. A "software solution with possibly open database format, API, lots of support for third party tools, etc.?" Do you really need something like Documentum for your bills and insurance card? You aren't gonna need it.

gvb 16y ago
All of my bills and insurance documents are already available on the various web sites so there's no reason to keep them or file them for posterity. For those documents, you are at the mercy of whoever provides the web site. Personally, I find it hard to track that information down after a year or less (forget the URL, forget my login, banks get acquired and systems change).
- gregjor 16y ago
  I've never needed old bills or bank statements for more than a few days -- long enough to check them over and pay. My credit union has a bill pay service that retrieves electronic copies of most of my bills so they're in one place. I have a free password manager that remembers and autofills URLs and logins. You have your own needs, but really why do you need to keep electronic copies of every document indefinitely? Archiving all of those ephemeral bits of paper seems like a waste of time, a kind of electronic hoarding that serves no useful purpose. In 50 years I've never once needed to produce an old utility bill or pay stub or bank statement; I keep things I need for tax purposes according to IRS retention rules but very little of my paperwork is relevant to my taxes. I scan a few things to PDF and keep those electronically but I don't have enough scanned documents to require more than some named folders to organize them. There are high-end document management systems used by companies that need to manage and keep lots of documents (like utilities, banks, and credit card companies), so if you really need such a system you can look at the standards and tools already invented for businesses instead of re-inventing that wheel.

by gregjor 16y ago

gvb 16y ago

All of my bills and insurance documents are already available on the various web sites so there's no reason to keep them or file them for posterity. For those documents, you are at the mercy of whoever provides the web site. Personally, I find it hard to track that information down after a year or less (forget the URL, forget my login, banks get acquired and systems change).

gregjor 16y ago
I've never needed old bills or bank statements for more than a few days -- long enough to check them over and pay. My credit union has a bill pay service that retrieves electronic copies of most of my bills so they're in one place. I have a free password manager that remembers and autofills URLs and logins. You have your own needs, but really why do you need to keep electronic copies of every document indefinitely? Archiving all of those ephemeral bits of paper seems like a waste of time, a kind of electronic hoarding that serves no useful purpose. In 50 years I've never once needed to produce an old utility bill or pay stub or bank statement; I keep things I need for tax purposes according to IRS retention rules but very little of my paperwork is relevant to my taxes. I scan a few things to PDF and keep those electronically but I don't have enough scanned documents to require more than some named folders to organize them. There are high-end document management systems used by companies that need to manage and keep lots of documents (like utilities, banks, and credit card companies), so if you really need such a system you can look at the standards and tools already invented for businesses instead of re-inventing that wheel.