Organizing Papers

By

HilaryC

I have two piles: to be paid and to be filed. The only difference between the two piles is that on the bills I've paid I write "pd ../.." and the date I paid it. I have my daughter file those.

By

notwrong

Since traveling with my husband we needed a compact way to keep financial stuff together. I use a 3 ring binder - I have clear separators in there I store a 2009 calender. I have a pencil holder designed for a 3 ring binder where I keep pen, white out, & hold puncher. I have sections separated where I staple receipts to a plain piece of paper marked with the month(motel, food, warranty). In my calendar I have marked expenses by day, birthdays and such. I staple each of my husbands check stubs in the appropriate month. Each month I wrote in how much was spent for each tax deductible item. This method made doing my taxes really easy. I just took all 2008 out used brads to hold all together and transferred to paper folder marked 2008.

By

kimhis

File cabinet, files, labeled 'Taxes', 'Bank Statements', 'Owners' Manuals', and so on. Hang in there, you need a file cabinet. Try not to let papers drip from your fingers until they land where they REALLY belong.

By

Glenn'sMom

My husband had me follow his procedure when I worked for him and we've carried it through after his retirement. He has 3 baskets on his desk top. They're labeled To Be Paid, To Be Filed, and For Review. The incoming mail goes in the For Review basket until he can look at it. The use of the others is clear.

I file all papers in a metal filing cabinet and have designed my filing system in a way that works for us. I suppose each family would be different. We have a place in a drawer for medical, credit cards, utilities, insurance, taxes, rental expenses, farm expenses, on and on.

When we have a receipt for a credit card purchase it goes in the TO BE PAID basket until the bill comes in and then we match receipts with bills and staple all of them to that bill.
Staying on top of the filing is the thing I dread most in life (not sure why...) but doing this makes our lives soooo much easier at tax time..

I have bags of papers sitting around the house because it is tax time. I haven't been good about organizing. I want to start out this year right. How can I keep my mail, bills, paid bills and cancelled checks organized or where can I find out what I need to keep and how to organize this stuff? - Gracie