| Our Favorite Home Filing System |
|
|
This product divides your files into five sections, called Monthly, Tax, Permanent, Remove/Replace, and Resource.
Most household papers can be filed by month. This will dramatically reduce the time and energy required to complete your routine filing. Your 24 sequential hanging files are labeled by month "January", "February", etc., providing two full years. One year is labeled "EVEN YEAR" and the other "ODD YEAR". The current month file is where you will file petty receipts, paid bills, personal account statements, etc. When a year fills up, move all folders to the back. Bring forward the folders from the previous year and re-use one month at a time. Each new month, automatically empty out papers left over from two years ago. TAX You can always be ready for taxes! File any tax related documents you accumulate during the year in your tax folder(s) for the current year. There is a duplicate set of your tax folders. One set is labeled "EVEN YEAR" and the other "ODD YEAR". Doing so will allow you tokeep tax documentation from last year separate from this year until you file your return. After filing taxes, you will empty your tax folders and move all supporting documents into the tax archive, allowing those tax folders to be reused the following year. There is no need to review and purge documents each year or set up new folders. After finishing your taxes, file the contents of your tax folders, along with a copy of your actual tax forms, into a single folder in your tax archive. The ten folders in your tax archives are as follows "Tax Year 0", "Tax Year 1", up to "Tax Year 9". File 2004 taxes in "Tax Year 4", 2005 in "Tax Year 5", and so on. You will reuse each tax folder every ten years, automatically removing the documents left over from ten years past. The ten-year archive will guarantee that you always have a tax folder ready when you finish your taxes. PERMANENT Save vital family and property records in the Permanent folders. Permanent family records include certificates, education and medical records, genealogy, etc. Permanent property records include title, original purchase receipt, maintenance receipts, and warranties. Permanent files do not require purging. REMOVE/REPLACE "Remove/Replace" files are easily kept current. Many ongoing household documents are periodically updated, renewed, or replaced. Whenever a new version arrives, automatically remove the old before filing the new. Examples include insurance policies, wills, leases, home loan/rental agreements, service provider contracts, employment benefits package, or your current resume. In most cases, there is no need to keep older versions of these documents. RESOURCE These include papers you want to keep for future reference. But, before you decide to save articles, clippings, notes, brochures, and literature for future reference, consider that more current information is likely to be available at a later time on the Internet. Why?
|
