That’s basically my primary IRA, 401(k), brokerage, checking, and savings accounts. What do I do? I maintain regular paper statements for my most important financial accounts. (It may be a good idea to read up on file encryption.) In the event of some local disaster where my home and my bank is destroyed, then digital records in the cloud would be helpful. In the event of some Fight Club-esque event where the digital records of your assets are lost, paper statements might help. I am also curious to know if credit card companies have found that paperless statements lead to more missed payments and thus more interest and late fees. (I would agree with the implication that those repeated calls for you to “go paperless” are less about eco-friendliness and more about saving printing and mailing costs. Indeed, the IRS accepts electronic copies as equivalent to paper, so why shouldn’t we? Keeping a nice long history of either paper or paperless statement can help you prove ownership or status of assets. safe deposit box, extra USB drive, cloud backup). You can protect yourself with redundant copies of either one (i.e. Electronic statements can be lost, hacked, or destroyed (i.e. Paper statements can be lost, stolen, or destroyed (i.e. So, which is safer? In my opinion, for most things they are equivalent. So the best precaution I can give is for you to go back to getting the paper. If you are set up for electronic info only, well, that’s going to hurt. With a paper statement in hand, it’s easier to prove that you had the money in the first place in the event funds go missing. If you’ve done so, I want you to turn that around and go back to getting statements in the mail. If you think about all the companies you do business with, they all try to get you to turn off paper statements. She converts emails documenting charitable contributions and other tax-related expenses into PDF files by choosing the “print” function and then “save as PDF.” At the end of the year, she downloads her bank and credit card statements into the folder.īut then Reader Bill sent over this Clark Howard article about the benefits of paper statements: If a document comes to her in paper form, she scans it, saves it in the folder and shreds the original. Long keeps a folder on her computer desktop for the current year’s tax documents. That’s the one thing they’re modern about.” “The IRS accepts electronic records,” said Long, resident financial adviser with Financial Finesse in Chicago. Kelley Long, a Chicago CPA and personal financial specialist, tries to generate as little paperwork as possible, opting for electronic records instead. This year, I turned to three certified public accountants to find out what apps, software and strategies they use to keep track of everything. Instead, I resolve every tax season to get a better handle on my paperwork - with mixed results. Liz Weston recently had a Reuters article about going paperless with tax-related documents: There are many tutorials on how to scan all your paper documents into Dropbox or Evernote. However, I still haven’t plunked down 400 bucks for it, because I don’t know if I’ll ever go completely paperless. It can digitize a page every 2 seconds, and some version of it has been on my Amazon Wishlist for many years. Pictured above is the Fujitsu ScanSnap iX500 Scanner.
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