What Can Stay and What Should Go? A Guide to Document Shredding

You may have a large pile of documents sitting around, whether it’s in your office or personal documents at home. The pile keeps growing and you just haven’t gotten around to sorting through it. You know it deserves your attention, and that most of it should be shredded, but you’re not exactly sure what can stay and what should go. Here’s your guide to document shredding.

What You Should Keep Forever

There are certain documents that you should keep physical copies of forever:

• Social security cards
• Birth certificates
• Death certificates
• Marriage license
• Business license
• Mortgage documents
• Vehicle titles
• Passports
• Wills, living wills and powers of attorney

You can scan all of the above documents and keep digital copies of them, but overall, if there’s a document that you think is important to keep, then do so. It’s better to be safe than sorry.

What You Should Keep for Now

It’s a good idea to keep the most recent version of the following documents:

• Insurance policies
• Retirement plan documents
• Social security statements
• Tax documents

Anything business related should be discussed with legal personnel before you decide to shred it. If you’re in the professional services industry and get audited regularly, you want to be sure you have all the documents that you’ll need to pass the audit.

Your next step is to organize all the files you are keeping in labeled folders and store them securely in boxes or cabinets. From there, you can decide what can be safely shredded, which should be the remainder of your pile. When you’re ready to shred, let us know so that you can properly dispose of your confidential information!