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How long should you keep documents? A simple retention guide

Keep everything and you drown in paper. Throw out the wrong thing and you regret it at tax time. Here is a clear, general guide to how long common documents are worth keeping.

These are common general guidelines, not rules for your specific situation. Retention periods can vary by where you live and by your circumstances, so treat this as a starting framework and confirm anything important for your own case.

Keep for about a month

• Routine receipts for small purchases, once you have checked them against your card statement and you are past any return window.
• ATM and deposit slips, once the transaction shows correctly on your statement.

Keep for about a year

• Monthly bills and utility statements, once paid and reconciled, unless you need them for a tax deduction or a warranty.
• Pay stubs, until you have checked them against your annual tax summary.
• Bank and credit card statements, unless they support a tax return, in which case they follow the tax timeline below.

Keep for several years

• Tax returns and their supporting documents. Many people keep these for several years because tax authorities can review returns within a set window, and that window can be longer in some situations. A common conservative habit is to keep them for around seven years.
• Records that support the value of things you own, such as home improvement receipts, for as long as you own the asset plus the tax window after you sell.
• Medical bills and explanations of benefits, at least until the matter is fully resolved and reconciled, and longer if they support a tax deduction.

Keep indefinitely

• Identity and legal documents: birth and marriage certificates, passports, Social Security records, wills, deeds, and similar. These are the documents to keep in original form, in a safe place.
• Records with no natural end, such as loan payoff confirmations and major legal agreements.

What to shred

When you do dispose of documents, shred anything with account numbers, a Social Security number, or other identifying details. Identity theft often starts in a recycling bin.

The easier way to hold all of this

The reason retention is stressful is that it asks you to remember rules for dozens of document types. A digital archive removes most of that burden. When every letter is scanned, dated, and filed by category, keeping something for seven years costs nothing and takes no space, and finding it later takes a second.

LetterDesk turns your mail into exactly that archive. Each letter is read, categorized, and dated when you scan it, so a bill, a tax document, and a medical statement each sit in the right place, searchable for as long as you want to keep them. You can keep the digital record effortlessly and shred the paper you no longer need, holding on only to the true originals that must exist on paper.

Shrink the keep pile by going digital

Most keep-or-toss anxiety disappears once you digitize paper documents. Scan important documents before you shred anything borderline, and the question changes from where will I store this to why would I ever lose it. LetterDesk is a document scanner app and an app for storing important documents in one: it helps you keep important documents organized by year and category, tames paper clutter at the source, and makes it painless to organize documents at home without a filing cabinet.

Common questions

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