New Year-New Opportunities –New You

Get Happy! It’s a new year for new adventures and new beginnings. You now have a blank slate to clear the clutter, organize your paperwork and create more space. Take advantage of the inspiration you are feeling now to free yourself from any “stuff” weighing you down. January is a great time to start sorting through your paperwork. You will need to start gathering the financial documents you need for your taxes, so why not start pulling the paperwork out and as you see paper you can get rid of, do IT!

Start by gathering all the paperwork you have spread out everywhere in the house and gather it in one location (kitchen table, home office floor, counter, or wherever you will have space to gather it all). Now follow these steps:

1. SORT into “keep,” “toss,” “shred,” or “read later.”

• • KEEP the last month statement for any financial documents (bank statements, receipts, utility bills, credit card statement, mortgage statements) that you cannot access online or through your financial institution.
  • KEEP up to seven years of investment records, medical records, tax returns with supporting documentation, bankruptcy records, satisfied judgments and paid loan statements for IRS purposes. If these are available online and you can print these out, or scan and save them digitally, then you can get rid of the paper.
  • TOSS/RECYCLE any documents without personal indentifying information, magazine articles, old notes, etc.
  • SHRED any papers with personal indentifying information (SSN #s, bank account and credit card #s, passwords, pins, medical, and legal information)
  • Start a READ LATER file ONLY if you have relevant information that you will realistically read when you have the time. If these documents have not been touched in a month, then you are mostly likely not going to read them later and it may be time to empty it out.

3. ORGANIZE the documents that you are keeping into a filing system (if you have not decided to scan these into digital files). You can create folders alphabetically by name of institution or by general titles (medical records, bank statements, tax records, etc).
4. MAINTAIN your filing system. If you are in a hurry and can’t file the paper right away, you can add it to a TO FILE Be sure to empty that folder each week so it doesn’t pile up on you. The key to maintaining is to sort your mail daily and not let it pile up.

Don’t get overwhelmed with paper and don’t accept any that you know you will not need or may not interest you. If someone wants to share information with you, you can always take a picture of it, get the website, or even have them email you the information. This process starts and ends with you and your decision to minimize the paper clutter in our life.