Save Time And Money
How quickly can you answer the following questions:
- Where is your birth certificate?
- How much interest do you earn from savings and investments?
- If fire destroyed your living room, what is the value of
your personal possessions?
- Where would you find canceled or imaged checks to verify
a deduction you claimed on last year’s federal income
tax return?
- How much have you invested in home improvements over
the past 5 years?
While you may not have those
answers readily available, all
of that information should
be available in a simple, but
well-organized record-keeping
system.
Creating and maintaining a
proper record-keeping system
does not require much time
or money.
Electronic Documentation
You can reduce your paperwork by
maintaining and updating some
records on computer. You may
also buy commercial software programs
that help you organize your financial
records and prepare and file your federal
income tax returns. Check with your
financial institution to verify how
long electronic records are stored.
In this article, you will
learn which records are important
to retain, how long to retain
them and how to effectively
organize them. It will also be
an invaluable resource for your
family members if you were to
become incapacitated or upon
your death.
Important: This article
includes work sheets
to help you document
important personal
and financial information.
It is essential
that you store this
information in a safe
deposit box at your financial
institution or in another secure
location away from your residence.
You can also scan the documents,
save them to a disk and store the disk
in your safe deposit box. Your survivors
and/or executor(s) may be designated as
a signer on your safe deposit box, have
a key and know the location of the box.
Topics covered in this section are:
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Basic Money Management
Basic Money Management