Since I'm on-hold dealing with a medical billing dispute, I figured I would try to do something productive...
Scan & Save is one of those habits that is good to develop early, when your finances are simple. You likely won't need a paper trail until your first financial or legal dispute with someone, when they say those magic words: "Prove it." Then you will be scrambling to get your ducks in a row, often under a deadline. Even in my early 30's, I have successfully resolved a number of disputes, because I had a better paper trail than the other guy.
But everything is already available online. Why bother saving the stuff myself?
- Companies lose data and go out of business all the time- you can't trust them to store it all for you. Small businesses are notorious for bad record-keeping, and larger businesses will have retention policies that purge any communications or data after X months.
- If you have a billing dispute with a company, they have a financial incentive to withhold any evidence that works against them- and if their data is conveniently missing, the burden falls on you to provide evidence.
- When filing warranty or insurance claims, the first thing they will ask for is proof of ownership, proof of value, etc.
- Tax day is easier to deal with, if you have been scanning in all of your tax-related items over the course of the year. If you are ever caught in the crosshairs of an IRS audit, you will be glad to have your own tax records in one place.
Scanning
- There are plenty of free scanning apps for phones, or you can opt for a pricey-but-awesome desktop scanner (the decent ones start at $170).
- My preference is to scan everything into PDF format, as it can be emailed, printed, and appended to as-needed.
Saving
- A digital filing system can be as simple as a set of folders with standard file names. What works for me is to have a set of category folders, and all documents are named with an ISO-style date stamp in front. That allows me to get a timeline of the documents, by simply sorting by name. For example:
YYYYMMDD_feistypenguin_billing_dispute.pdf - Whatever method you use, consistency is key. When you keep 10+ years of records, naming becomes more and more important.
- Whether you are comfortable using cloud storage or not is up to you, but it does make saving stuff easier when you are on-the-go. There are options for encrypting the data, which is less convenient but more secure.
I would love to hear if others have tips to share, or if they have a filing system that works for them? Any success stories in smiting your enemies with paperwork?
Submitted June 18, 2018 at 05:32PM by feistypenguin https://ift.tt/2leNNbM
