I'm late this year. Here it is almost the end of March, and I'm just packing up my 2010 bills and starting to file my 2011 bills in the accordian file. You see, every year, I just reuse the same accordian file. I put the previous year's bills in a plastic bin for storage, toss out the bills from several years ago. It's a rotating system.
In these days, I can't just toss the old bills in the trash. Any bills that have any identifying information, including my Social Security number or the charge card account numbers, must be shredded before tossing. It's kind of a pain, and part of the reason that I hadn't dealt with rotated the bills until now.
It's always interesting to go back through a year's worth of bills. In addition to the bills themselves, I have archived important other papers - cards, invitations, etc. I've also starting to pull out my medical record information to put in a file I'm starting to keep. After all, I work in health IT, and I know one of the challenges is for people to keep their own medical histories. This is particularly important for me as my doctor doesn't use electronic records. My medical history is housed in several paper files. Who knows whether it's all really there? It's time for me to be part of the process and keep my own records.
The other thing I found in the purging this year was the originals of my student loan documentation. I originally took out my loans with the Department of Education. They have since rolled over to Sallie Mae. Again, considering the state of that organization, it behooves me to have my own documentation, don't you think?
So the annual purging of the files is a good thing, usually. Even it doesn't happen until March.
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