Monday, November 28, 2005

 

To be filed

Every couple of weeks, we go through bills and stuff that's come in, and the papers B and I feel we need to keep -- credit card and bank statements, insurance renewal forms, tax receipts, etc. -- go into a thick accordian folder which we call the "to be filed" folder. This is just a temporary holding place until we take those papers and put them into labelled file folders.

I always plan to "catch up on filing" at the next long weeked -- like Thanksgiving -- or the next break between semesters. But somehow, I don't get to it, and we actually have more than one "to be filed" folder now.

B, not trusting that "I'll get on top of the filing as soon as classes end in two weeks," decided to tackle it now. She has discovered this disquieting fact. We haven't done any filing -- relying instead on stuffing "to be filed" folders -- since summer 2002.

You heard me: we haven't done our family filing for three-and-a-half years.

I find that I have two reactions to this. Part of me says:
Holy f*cking sh*t! That is just totally out of control!!!
Another part of me says:
Hmmm... 3 1/2 years without doing any filing, and things have gone pretty much okay.... So why do we need to do filing?

Comments:
eeerrrmmm.... so in the spirit of not filing, does this mean you also haven't filed your tax returns for three years? or simply that you do so without any reference to your actual expenses, deductions and misc. income?

w.p.k.

p.s. to be fair, i decided to have a serious clear-out this past holiday weekend, diving into deep deep storage in the closets and basements. so far there are 17 large size hefty bags of trash on the porch, and still counting. (and this doesn't include the bags of items that went to goodwill and to the used bookstore). most of it -- old papers and photocopies of articles. and this doesn't include each year's financial records, as there is a box for each year, still stashed in storage with the tax returns. kinda scary what we accumulate over time. you ought to come by and take a picture of the porch!
 
I file my stuff much in the same way, but my "to be filed" goes in a pile in front of my filing drawer.

Granted, you don't need much of that stuff. But I keep mine just in case. It's come in handy a few times as I've had to argue with companies over mistakes.

However, I also throw them out after I do taxes...
 
I generally catch up with my filing around tax time, because that's when I need the stuff I keep. However, the piles are getting pretty thick around here now.
 
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