It is a usual ritual for you to receive bank statements every month. Off late, the growing pile of papers grabbed your attention. This has made you think if you should keep these paper documents forever.

These statements are shared with you via the virtual platform. They describe how you are handling personal finances. Thus, having a thorough look at them is vital once you receive them.

If you keep storing them month after month, it will be impossible to hold a huge pile. You must shred or discard them after a definite time. In addition, there are aspects that you must keep in mind to discern when you should get rid of them.

You would need to review the statement to find out when you took out low interest on personal loans. This information will let you be punctual about loan repayment. If you discard any statement that includes important information like this, loan repayment might get delayed.

You can see that time duration is not the only concern. The details enclosed in the statement should be considered before discarding or shredding it.

In this blog, we will shed light on the different areas you must focus on to make sure what you should do with the bank statement. You can take a tour of this blog to save time and take the right step.

For what purpose would you need a bank statement?

Bank statements are critical to be showcased as your income evidence. You would need them at the time of preparing for the taxes. Most importantly, you require these statements to monitor your financial transactions.

There is a segment of bank customers who would prefer having the bank statement in paper format. Besides, you could be one of them who have already switched to the paperless format. In your case, storing past records for a longer duration will not be a problem.

With the former set of customers, storage might be an issue. For both of you, these records are documents from where you can extract information at any time.

When and how you might require these statements is subjected to your financial behaviour and your transactions. Assume a situation where you need to claim a tax refund. This is an instance where you need to present the bank statements as proof to support your claim.

A bank statement will help determine if your expenses have exceeded your income for this month. You can easily point out if you are spending money for unimportant reasons.

Is there an exact time limit to keep such records?

The paper file of the statement contains different types of information. You might find that some of the information is of no use to you.

It would be a good idea if you could filter the vital details to keep them separately. You will be able to store necessary information in an organised way.

After one year, you can discard the actual paper statement as you have already maintained a separate record. Please note that any document storing information about tax deductions should not be discarded till 3 years.

If you are regular at filing taxes and your work is the most accurate, you do not need to store any information beyond 3 years.

If you have registered for virtual banking services, exploring information will be effortless. Your bank will make sure to keep the records in a particular order. At any time, you are free to retrieve any information. It is an effortless process than manual ones.

If you are into hardcore investing, it is pivotal for you to store any information related to transactions for 7 years.

Will the bank provide me statements whenever needed?

There are banks that follow the policy of holding the customer’s statements for 5 years. The best part is that you can extract any information from these records using the online app or the bank’s website.

You can even request a paper-format document. Your bank might charge an additional fee to print and send the documents to you.

In case of records that are very much old, you might have to visit the bank’s back office. It is because such information is meant to be kept there only.

It is easy to avoid the additional expense and the hotchpotch if you have already maintained a manual record of all the vital details.

How to shred or discard the records?

You must discard records from time to time. Otherwise, someone else might misuse your information for the wrong reasons. From technical perspective, preserving too much information would be strenuous.

Thus, you should shred the documents that you will no longer need. Once 60 days are over, you can shred the credit card statement. Don’t keep utility bills for two or three years!

In the case of the car or home insurance, get rid of the old ones soon as you fetch the one policy.

The bottom line

Oftentimes, the pile of bank statements might turn into an eyesore. It happens when you ignore to sort out the statements from time to time. As a result, a heap of paper gets accumulated.

There is a proper way to organise this mess. If you must pursue some practices, you can say goodbye to the unwanted pile of paper. At the same time, you will be able to maintain the vital documents.

Managing bank statements need you first to understand which one to keep and which one to discard. Don’t just throw away statements randomly! You might lose a crucial piece of information.

With electronic statements, you need not have to worry much. The older statements will automatically get removed from your account. Plus, it can save a huge amount of information in the form of statements for quite a long period.

With online statements, it is not a critical matter. Above all, you need not have to preserve these statements with you physically. It will not visually occupy your space. So, maintaining this type of statement can be a way out of this problem.