6 ms·
I had this problem too, with majority of documents being A4, but a single bank/med bill ruins the rest of the stack. My solution was to just give up on keeping
by Ayesh 4y ago
I had this problem too, with majority of documents being A4, but a single bank/med bill ruins the rest of the stack.
My solution was to just give up on keeping the documents unless I have to, for legal/tax purposes, and just digitally archive them. Modern scanner apps are super good, and the OCR/search features make the 20 seconds it takes to scan it and throw away the paper.
- WastingMyTime89 4y agoHonest question: why do you archive things you don’t have to archive?
- jxf 4y agoFor me it's a "you never know" situation. The cost of being wrong about this can be very high.
- Ayesh 4y agoFor easier searching and sometimes nostalgic reasons. When I was in my early 20s, I used to save ticket stubs, boarding passes, train tickets, etc when I was traveling, I really liked keeping them. But when I saw myself becoming a borderline hoarder, I took photos of them and threw all of them away. Even today, I have the habit of taking a document image of ticket stubs and other new things, specially when I'm in a new city or a country. There is no practical use for them, just that they help me to not stack up physical papers. The other real documents I archive are mostly documents related to dividend notices, water/electricity bills that unfortunately come in snail mail, etc. I'd be fine if I don't keep them, but I have them in the very unlikely scenario that I just might need to make a paper trail.
- ghaff 4y agoI have a bunch of stuff I wish I could easily digitize and throw away the originals. But, aside from doing a few selective things, the effort to en masse digitize and add enough metadata so I could actually find stuff isn't worth the return.
- throwaway290 4y agoFor some people "please provide evidence of your previous travel history" is something to worry about. Will they accept digitalized version? Who knows!
- ghaff 4y agoI would have absolutely no systematic record of my travel history outside of stamps in a passport and TripIt.
- throwaway290 4y agoPassports tend to get lost, and replacement won't have the stamps. Whether this matters for you mostly depends on your citizenship.
- ghaff 4y agoCertainly for some nationalities getting visas is harder than others. Though I'm not sure what would even constitute proof beyond passport immigration stamps and you don't necessarily always have those. Most boarding passes these days are either just printed out on a printer or displayed on an app. I'd actually have a pretty good record going back maybe 20 years with TripIt but that doesn't seem as if it would be considered authoritative.
- usefulcat 4y agoNot the parent but: because you often don't know with certainty whether a particular document will be needed at some point in the future. Edit: Concrete example: I'll probably never get audited by the IRS, but if I ever do, I really really want to have all the records I need to defend myself.
- bradknowles 4y agoFor the IRS, you only need to keep documents seven years back. Anything older than seven years can be shredded.
- copperx 4y agoSo everybody must keep 7 years of archives? Is that why houses in the US are so big? And does everybody have an archival room? Or does the IRS accept scans? So many questions.
- nicoburns 4y agoHow many documents do you have??? Surely one smallish box would do for most people?
- bradknowles 4y agoSome people, yes. Others, no. As your finances get more complex, and you change employers more often, and you have more 401k plans that are distributed around various companies, and you have multiple credit cards, etc... then your storage requirements will necessarily increase.
- ghaff 4y agoEssentially all such records are available online. In any case, a file cabinet is almost certainly sufficient if you want to save a few years of printed copies.
- jdeibele 4y agoMy mother kept the first utility bill of the year for electricity, natural gas, water and sewer, etc. She lived in the same house for 42 years and liked to be able to see how much the amounts had changed over the years. I’m not sure it was tremendously useful but she could verify her feeling that water and sewer increased disproportionately to the others, for example.
- copperx 4y agoHow does she remember to do that every year? That's amazing.
- ColinWright 4y agoHow do you know you don't need to archive it? Recently a colleague needed to provide 20 years of details of addresses lived and trips overseas made in order to complete various immigration forms. Governments can change their demands at their whim. If you don't have the documents, you're screwed.
- ghaff 4y agoI guess it happens but, while I've lived in the same house for many years, I wouldn't remotely have any real proof of overseas travel except for passport stamps and whatever is recorded in TripIt (which I assume wouldn't constitute proof). We're taking dozens and dozens of trips. I suspect very few people save that type of information unless they know in advance they'll need it.
- ColinWright 4y agoIf you never move, and certainly never travel between countries, then you are probably OK. But honestly, you don't know. Governments can and do change the laws when it suits them. Here's another specific example. It's not just the initial tweet, you can see example after example in the discussion: https://twitter.com/OmidVEbrahimi/status/1558024348132327424 https://twitter.com/OmidVEbrahimi/status/1558024348132327424 You're not in the same position, I assume you were born in the USA. But do you really trust the Government not to change the laws? And what if you want to accept a contract or employment in another country? How much would you need to have archived in those circumstances? Are you sure? Personally, having lived and worked in four countries, I archive pretty much everything.
- jopsen 4y agoI have box that papers I need to keep goes into. The theory is that it's highly unlikely that I'll ever need to produce/find the papers every again. So if I have to, I'll pay the cost of sorting and organizing the papers when that day comes. Kind of like lazy evaluation in Haskell :)