How Long to Keep Important Paperwork?

[Indianamom2]

Does anyone know how long you should keep things like old billing statements, old medical insurance EOB statements, paycheck stubs, etc? I am drowning in paperwork of this sort and I don't want to buy a new filing cabinet...I want to get rid of it.

I mean, I see no reason on earth to keep old electric bills from the apt. that we rented and left 6+ years ago, do you? I think we have almost every single bill statement we've paid since we got married 10+ years ago. We can't keep them all.

DH however, is a paranoid attorney (is there any other kind?:wink2:) and the only thing he really keeps is paperwork. I need to know the "rules" here, pretty please!

[BabyBearsMom]

I don't think I would keep most bills more than a year, max. If anything is tax related, you should keep it for a minimum of 4 years (in case of audit).

What we do to manage paperwork is we scan all of our bills and keep electronic files. We shred the paper versions. Then we have a folder for each year with everything there. I mostly keep those for monitoring our budgeted spending to actual spending. I have things going 5 years back.