Question How do you deal with the paper in your life?

[ichb]

Greetings all!

I've filed Chapter 7 June 20th and am starting to gear up my life for the "fresh start", we've gone through all of our stuff, had a yard sale (with attorney's approval), took old construction debris to the dump, donated books and now comes the really hard part. What to do with the mounds of debt related papers that I have accumulated.

I'm even more concerned now about throwing stuff away or shredding it for fear that somebody will want to see something related to the bankruptcy. What should I keep? What can I throw away or shred?

We live in a mobile home and simply do not have room for storage boxes full of old documentation. Not to mention the fact that most of it I haven't looked at in years.

I'd love to hear everyone's opinions and strategies for dealing with clutter.

ichb

[AngelinaCat]

Hi ichb: The rule of thumb for income tax papers used to be 7 years, now I believe it may be ten. Going to the irs site at irs.gov may give some guidelines. Since you have filed BK now, you probably want to keep the last five years of everything. Anything else, if you are sure you don't need it, shred it and then burn the shredded remains. Those are my thoughts, I am sure other will have other recommendations. It also may vary according to your state and district.

Good luck!

[Flamingo]

As to your BK paperwork. Keep copies of anything related directly to your Chapter 7 filing after discharge until your Chapter 7 is completely off your credit records (i.e., 10 years). Once your Chapter 7 is discharged, you can toss past billings and past due stuff related to your BK. Just ensure you hold onto your Court filing papers, creditor matrix and discharge paperwork and any court or attorney correspondence relating to your case. Make sure you shred anything that has names, addresses and account numbers on it.

[ichb]

How about student loan stuff?

I get so much stuff regarding my student loans from the loan company and the school that it is overwhelming. Anybody know of what I need to keep? I'm thinking of the disclosure statements and maybe the actual statements for what I've paid so far. Other than that most of the stuff seems useless.

[Cali]

The only thing I have now are taxes and my paperwork from filing. I have shredded everything else.

[Flamingo]

Student loan information just needs common sense. As long as you have something that shows what you have been given so far in student loans and when/what years and something showing what you paid so far showing the payment was received, that should be all you need unless you have had specific problems with them as to anything; if so, and there is correspondence for that, keep that correspondence for several years.

[fltoo]

Scan everything, throw the hard copies away. (shred) Use a separate disk for each catergory and label it carefully.
Save hard copies of tax returns, discharges, etc.

I got so sick of keeping so much paperwork over the years. I now have it all on a couple of disks.

[AngelinaCat]

Scan everything, throw the hard copies away. (shred) Use a separate disk for each catergory and label it carefully.
Save hard copies of tax returns, discharges, etc.

I got so sick of keeping so much paperwork over the years. I now have it all on a couple of disks.

Hi fltoo and ichb: This is what we do also. We scan everything into Adobe Acrobat, including whatever we find on PACER so we don't run THAT bill up. Just make sure you have a good hard drive back-up, and keep it off-site. We do the father-son method weekly.

[parsoc48]

Oh my god, scanning takes forever! Do you have a superduper fast one or something?