List of Important Financial Documents
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Everyone talks about protecting all of your important financial documents but what if you aren’t entirely sure what’s important and what’s junk? Do you need to stick your credit card statements into a safe deposit box? Below I’ll try to list all of the important financial documents so that you can either 1) stick them in a safe place or 2) can replacement them if you’ve recently suffered a catastrophe that has destroyed them.
- Birth certificates
- Social Security cards
- Passports
- Citizenship
- Driver’s licenses
- DD214 – Military discharge papers
- Marriage/divorce papers
- Living will, copy of unsigned will
- List of bank accounts with bank contact information
- List of credit card numbers with bank contact information
- Title to your car(s), insurance documents, registration
- Deed to your house, mortgage & insurance documents
- Tax returns, W2s (Thanks AJ)
If I’ve missed anything, please do let me know!
{ 20 comments, please add your thoughts now! }
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Aug 15, 2006 | Read more in Personal Finance
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Tax returns, W2s
If you stick your driver’s license in a safe place, how will you use it when you are pulled over, want to buy alcohol, want to get into a club, or maybe use your credit card?
Danny – For a lot of the documents above, they’re in category 2, items you’ll want to remember to replace. While a driver’s license is a significant enough item that you’ll remember to replace it, some of the other things aren’t.
You can also make a photocopy of the stuff you need to use frequently just for record keeping purposes.
I currently use a sentry fireproof box in our office. I was thinking of upgrading to a bank safe deposit box however I’m not really ready to fork over money for that kind of security.
Another alternative would be to scan these documents using a good encryption program, then store them on a remote server (with strong encryption as well).
I have been using a service called Carbonite.com that backs up my entire hard drive continually (without slowing down my internet connection) and also allows me to select specific files to be backed-up.
Perhaps you can use this or any similar service to back-up important scanned documents as well.
So far Carbonite seems pretty good (it’s a very new service) any only cost around $ 2.50 a month.
Good list..it’s something people don’t think about on a regular basis, so reminding them is fabulous.
Excellent idea for a list, some things might be forgotten for sure. Our list is up if you’d like to look… have a great day!
Good list but you did forget the DD214 which is the military discharge document. Not everyone has one but for those that where in the military you always want to keep a copy.
Great list, but definitely add DD214. I’ve needed it more than my marriage license.