How Many Years Should You Keep Your Bank Statements?

Storing financial documents can become a burden for someone who isn’t properly organized. However, keeping financial documents is incredibly important, especially way after you’ve initially received them. Standard rules state that you should keep your financial documents for about 6 years. This is incredibly important, as the IRS or other services can go back and ask you to provide financial information regarding a small detail in the past at some point. Failure to provide them with this information can result in a bad situation for you.

However, this information can be somewhat misleading. If you are an individual with a business, it is in your best interest to stick to the 6-year rule. At any point in time, you can be audited for something and will need to provide proper information regarded said audit. As an individual, 22 months is about the proper time when you can consider properly destroying files. However, at the end of the day its in your best interest to keep files for as long as possible. You never know what might come up.

So, what are some ways we can properly store these bank statements? Thanks to technology, we don’t necessarily have to store things physically in a dusty old filing cabinet somewhere. If you have a scanner, you can take it upon yourself to digitally scan these important documents over time (you don’t want to do it all at once, that would be a huge pain!). Save them to a flash drive and store away for safe keepings. Most things are done electronically now days, so it would be in your best interest to provide the digital version of these documents anyway.

Always remember to play it safe when it comes to financials. While it may seem like a burden to keep these documents for long periods of time, it can save you piles of trouble if you simply follow these rules we’ve mentioned above.