What you should include in your filing system outline
December 31, 2008 by Jennifer Chait
Filed under Home & Living
in the last post, Why Willy-Nilly Filing Systems Suck – Plan Ahead for the Best Filing System, I said I’d be back with a basic plan for what you should include in your filing system outline.
Here are some major categories you need to plan for:
Taxes – and if I were you, I’d plan to separate them by year.
Insurance:
- Home or renters
- Health (per person)
- Dental (per person)
- Auto (per car)
Medical records per person.
Receipts:
- Repairs for home or car.
- Health care costs.
- Purchases.
- Holiday – I always keep holiday receipts for a couple of months, just in case.
Banking – separated by account; also you can include credit card info in this area.
Retirement – 401K or other
Stocks and bonds
Bills – make a category for each bill, and then set bills aside for 12 mos. After a year purge old bills.
Instructions
Warranties
Home info – in this category I’d include rental or mortgage info.
Some people also include fun stuff in their filing system, like recipes, decorating tips, and more. I’m not a fan of this because a filing system is large enough when you only include the necessary items. If you’d like a fun file section, I’d put in in a different place. You could use a different filing cabinet, or if you don’t have too many docs, the same file cabinet, in another drawer.
Next up, mistakes people make when planning their filing system.
I recently implemented the Freedom Filer system for my home:
http://www.freedomfiler.com/Home.cfm
This a pre-designed, but flexible, system for basic home filing. There are “permanent” files, then 2 sets of color-coded rotating files for even and odd years. It is “self-purging,” in that you keep the more ephemeral stuff around for the year it happened, plus the following year. The system makes it easy to keep track of medical records, warranties, wills, etc.
This is a well-thought-out system that was recommended by a couple of the productivity/simplicity/no-clutter blogs I follow. I maintained a fairly labor-intensive manual system for a long time, then I had NO system. I think it will be much easier to be faithful to this method in the long run. The tax files organize a set of 10 year files in decades, so I told my daughter she may inherit it…
The basic Freedom Filer kit (not including file folders) is $43. It uses handing folders, which can expensive unless you shop around. I was surprised at how much time was required just to put the labels on folders. If you have more dollars than time, you can order the system pre-assembled, for ~$100 more (!).