Best Results Organizing

Whenever I get married, I start buying Gourmet Magazine.

She’d stopped reading the kind of women’s magazine that talked about romance and knitting and started reading the kind of women’s magazine that talked about orgasms, but apart from making a mental note to have one if ever the occasion presented itself she dismissed them as only romance and knitting in a new form.

Paper Doll loves magazines. You might expect that a professional organizer specializing in eliminating paper clutter would limit herself to only a few such indulgences. In fact, I subscribe to seventeen publications. Doubt my count? Kiplinger’s, Money, Newsweek, Budget Travel, Cooking Light, Oprah, Real Simple, TV Guide, Entertainment Weekly, More, Pink, Self, Entrepreneur, 1-to-1, New York Enterprise Report, Organize and Cornell Alumni Magazine.

Let’s leave aside the magazines themselves and how one can be so addicted to the concept that possessing magazines means possessing all the vital knowledge (cough, cough) contained within. We’ll be talking about that next week.

The potential for magazine clutter aside, can you imagine how many of those little subscription cards flutter out onto the living room floor? Sometimes, you can’t even make it from the mailbox to your front door without chasing the feathery flight of these cards. Further, are you despairing, along with me, of all the “reminder” mail, cajoling and importuning us to renew, reminding us that our SUBSCRIPTION HAS ALMOST ENDED.

The truth is, the magazine subscription departments depend on our being disorganized. Last Fall, Hal Morris, in his Grumpy Editor blog, reported:

Example: Money magazine, in the Time Inc. family, sends out renewal reminders to subscribers a half year prior to current expiration dates. But wait. That’s when the “third renewal notice” goes into the mail. With it, a separate form message, identified as coming from the circulation manager, is rather gruff. Its opening line reads:

“This is the 3RD NOTICE we have sent about your MONEY subscription. We have yet to hear from you. It’s important that you take action NOW…”

Those words sound like a warning communication from the Internal Revenue Service.

Yeesh! The magazine monsters–pardon, the magazine subscription services people–figure that you won’t recall when you subscribed or renewed, so they’ll keep filling your mailbox, hoping you’ll keep on renewing subscriptions without checking the actual expiration dates. They even count on you not checking to see if your recent subscription payment went through! It would be easy for them to tempt the unprepared and disorganized into purchasing multiple subscriptions and wasting hard-earned money. But, dear reader, that need never happen to you again!

With a tiny bit of effort and even less maintenance, you can turn one rainy/snowy/slushy afternoon into a Magazine Mail Makeover.

1) Gather one copy of each magazine to which you subscribe. (Yes, Paper Doll hopes that you only have one issue of any given title in your house at any one time, but we’re not going to belabor the point this week.) Pile them up in front of you.

If you happen to toss or recycle magazines soon after you read them (good for you!), you may not be able to recall all the magazines to which you subscribe. Check the accounts payable section of your personal life system to see if you’ve kept the subscription confirmations that have been sent to you. (If not, consider creating a file folder now so you’ll be prepared the next time you subscribe or renew a subscription.)

2) Create a master magazine list. I practically live on my computer, so I prefer using a Microsoft Excel or other spreadsheet program. As I’ve mentioned previously, you don’t even need to pay for a spreadsheet program, as there are myriad free ones available at:

• Google
• Zoho
• Open Office
• Neo Office (Open Office for Mac users)
• ThinkFree

If you’re not a spreadsheet kind of person and have fairly legible penmanship (or penwomanship, which Paper Doll lacks), you can create a chart with paper and pen.

3) List the names of all the magazines to which you subscribe along the first (vertical) column. Don’t worry alphabetizing them; if you’re eager to do so, remember that you can use the sort function to alphabetize or organize by expiration date or even cost. If you’re handwriting this, you’re probably not the type to worry about alphabetizing anyway. ☺

4) List the following category titles along the top (horizontal) row:

• Magazine Name—That’s easy, as it’s listed right on the cover.
• Expiration Date—Look at your mailing label. The expiration date may be clearly written above your name as JAN 09, or you might have to look at a series of numbers until you recognize something that says 012009 to indicate January 2009. If your magazine came wrapped in cellophane and you’ve already tossed the label and wrapper, just leave this cell on the spreadsheet blank; you’ll be able to fill in the cell when you get your next issue.
• Subscription Phone Number—Flip open your magazine to the masthead –that where the magazines physical address is listed, plus all of the names and titles of founders, directors, editors, publishers and so on. (If the masthead goes on for many pages, you’ll find the phone number at the very end.) Near the bottom of the page, in tiny print, you’re likely to find “For subscription inquiries” with an 800 number.
• Web Address – In most cases, a subscription inquiry phone number will suffice, but for those of you who prefer doing things on the web, most magazine web sites have a menu link for subscriptions listed along with the subscription phone number. It’s my experience, however, that calling gets you immediate gratification and better service.
• Subscription Cost (or, note that it was a gift)—It’s helpful to know what you paid for a subscription, because those reminder cards can be sneaky, offering discounts in vague percentage-off terms that fail to compare apples to apples. If you received a discount rate when you first ordered, make a notation of that. (Sometimes, you can even call the 800 number before your issue is due to renew and ask for a discount that matches the price you previously received. It never hurts to ask, and having this information arms you for negotiations.)

Don’t worry if you can’t find some of this information now, but in anticipation of when/if you re-subscribe, remember to fill in these fields before you renew anything.

As with charitable donations, the mail requests start coming within months of your last payment, but there’s no reason to hold on to those request and let them pile up around you.

5) Make a notation on your calendar or keep this master magazine list in your tickler file for the month before a subscription is set to expire–renew then, and only then. For example, on March 1st, you’ll note that a subscription is up for renewal in April, and can pay at that time.

Armed with this information, you won’t be tempted to respond to every magazine renewal request that comes along. Keep the list on your computer or a printout near your desk and check each renewal “reminder” that pops into your mailbox against your list. Unless you’re within one month of your renewal date, toss the reminder out. You can be assured that future reminders will arrive; you will not be caught short without any precious issues.

Those of you who stockpile issues of National Geographic or Southern Living may be shocked to hear that while I read every issue of every magazine to which I subscribe, I never let more than a day pass when the old and new issue are both in the house at once. (You can boo and hiss now, if you like. I’ll wait.) In coming posts, we’ll talk about some reasonable ways to deal with the magazine pileups that take over our spaces. For now, use the next blast of icky whether to snuggle up with your magazine pile and make a master magazine list to be sure you and your money are not soon parted.

 

At the dawn of the computer revolution, we were promised a paperless office, and the implication was we’d eventually achieve a paperless world. Ha!

My clients call me because they have sedimentary-rock-like layers of paper dating back weeks, months, years…covering all of the horizontal surfaces of their offices and homes. Our mailboxes fill up each day with more credit card offers, and our computer desks are covered with printouts upon which we hand-doodle notes and edit changes.

And yet, the official word has arrived that in the war between paper and ourselves, paper is making a strategic retreat. So sayeth the Grey Lady of journalism. This weekend, the New York Times reported that:

Well, I’m thrilled to know I just lost 29 pounds, but I won’t rush out to buy any new outfits yet.

Certainly, it’s true that people are using their computers more, especially for time- and money-saving tasks like online bill-paying. I am somewhat dubious, though, about the suggestion that people are printing fewer pages due to the high cost of ink; an increased cost of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups is unlikely to keep me from grabbing those delights in orange wrappers, and I’m equally unlikely to do all my notes and brainstorming at the computer.

Paper Doll loves organizing paper and eliminating the unnecessary piles. That’s not in doubt. I adore that the Digital Age can help us all eliminate useless paper excess:

Mystery phone numbers – Find a scrap of paper with a phone number that means no more to you than an ISBN code or trigonometry problem? Just type a phone number (including the area code) into the Google search box (like, 212-555-1212) and if the phone number is listed, you’ll not only know whose number you scribbled, chance are good you’ll be provided with a way to map the directions to the phone’s location.

To Do Lists – There are myriad sites to help you log your To-Do lists and even share them with others:

• Blah Blah List
• Orchestrate
• Remember The Milk (with a delightful interface)
• Rough Underbelly (makes getting things done into a came)
• Ta Da List
• To Doist

With these, you can send reminders to your email, voicemail, home/office/personal phone and even, in the case of Monkey On Your Back, to other people to make sure they’re working on the tasks you’ve delegated to them.

If you use a digital system like one of these, you’ll have no worries that you’ll lose the list, and no fears that your lack of motivation will get the better of you. If you don’t visit your list, there are multiple ways to ensure your list will visit (or, if need be, stalk) you.

Work Sharing – Now that more of us are outside the traditional office environment, we may be working (or playing) from home. Instead of passing documents back and forth over the tops of our cubicles, the web allows us to share documents, edit changes and truly collaborate.

Ten years or so ago, we were excited about the “track changes” option in Microsoft Word, but we still had to face problems when Word for Windows and Word for Mac failed to show mutual affection. Now, even though they play nicely with others, we don’t even need to buy software suites; we can create and mutually edit documents stored in cyberspace in our free GoogleDocs or Zoho accounts.

Yes, Paper Doll loves the computer, but aspects of the New York Times article still leave me lukewarm about paper backing off the world’s stage.

I am torn regarding the notion of outsourcing the scanning of our memorabilia and photos. I’m currently reading Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat, which does a better job explaining the globalization of economics than anything Paper Doll‘s little math-addled mind has ever encountered. Thanks to Friedman, it doesn’t surprise me that a company like ScanCaf, headquartered in San Francisco but operating in Bangalore, India, will take your Dolce & Gabanna shoeboxes full of old photos, do all the scanning and retouching, and soon return the original mess along with nicely digitized and indexed photos on CD and/or in an online vault. Wow.

Am I nervous about sending the proof of my life’s existence across the globe? (Really, that’s all photos are, tangible evidence we’ve been on the planet.) Well, after reading Friedman’s book, I’m more confident my proof-of-life won’t be lost. And my clients who have been cajoled into feeling guilty for not having scrapbooked every moment of their children’s lives might be persuaded that this could be a guilt-releasing miracle. But even Paper Doll, a Certified Professional Organizer, isn’t eager to square away every nook and cranny’s worth of paper into a digital checkbox.

Can we really appreciate function and tidiness if no area of our lives remains untidy? Can a Kindle or Sony Reader Digital Book ever compete with a winter night shared with a well-worn copy of Pride & Prejudice or a sweltering 70’s summer reading Jaws?

Isn’t there still something romantic about a rainy Sunday afternoon spent wrapped in a fuzzy blanket, noodling through old, dog-eared photos and tear-stained love letters? Will our children’s children feel just as warmhearted if they rifle through digital photos and archived emails?

Paper Doll longs for a world with less paper, but not a paperless world.

 

Have you thought of selling some stocks to use as a down payment on a house? Maybe a creative relative bought you shares of IBM or Apple when you got your college degree in computer science, but those stock choices don’t fit your investment strategy? Or, perhaps talk of a recession is making you consider an investment you perceive to be a lower-risk?

If you’re thinking of selling stocks, the first thing you need to do is locate your stock certificates. Ask yourself:

• Am I CERTAIN I was issued a stock certificate in the first place?
• Am I sure I didn’t return the certificate to the brokerage for safekeeping?
• Where, oh where can my certificates be?

When you acquire stock (via purchase or gift), there are three different ways you can own or “hold” the stock:

1) Pretty stock certificates, suitable for framing, kept in your possession
If someone bought the stock for you as a gift, he or she probably opted for the nifty engraved certificates. If you are sure you received these certificates, check the following places for the actual stock certificates, photocopies of the certificates and/or records of the certificate numbers:

• Your safe deposit box or fireproof safe
• Your parents’ safe deposit box or fireproof safe
• That box of framed photos, diplomas and other certificates your parents handed off to you when you finally moved into a home of your own
• Under the beds
• In your filing cabinets

2) Pretty stock certificates embossed with your name that you sent back for safekeeping
Is it possible that instead of holding on to them, you followed the advice of a parent, attorney or other kindly soul who had you return the certificate to your stockbroker for safekeeping? (This was much more common prior to the 1980s and the widespread use of computers.) If you’re fuzzy on whether you were actually issued certificates, call your brokerage house or transfer agent to verify if they might be maintaining your certificates for you.

3) No stock certificates
Just because you receive quarterly notices of your reinvested dividends or stock activity doesn’t mean you have (or should have) certificates, merely that you own stock. This third way of holding stock is having it registered in a street name (unrelated to Huggy Bear on Starsky & Hutch) or book entry form.

The paperless office is a fantasy, but computers make it easier for stockbrokers to maintain the investment data without warehousing stock certificates. Indeed, discount brokers charge extra just to have the corporation in which you’re investing actually issue a stock certificate. Instead, the broker will issue your stock in street name, which means it’s registered in the brokerage house’s name (but the value of your individual shares are traceable digitally via computer), or, as is becoming increasingly common with direct (re)investment stock plans, stocks are held in your name, but digitally, without certificates, in book entry form.

If you were worried about not being able to find your certificates, I bet you’re really hoping that your stocks are held in street name or book entry form, aren’t you?

For reference, with stocks held in street name or book entry form, you’ve got no certificates to lose, and you can sell your stocks whenever you want, without worrying about transferring certificates, because your information is all held electronically. (Whether it’s wise to sell on a whim is another issue entirely.)

Also, if anything fun or funky goes on with your stock, you won’t be burdened by having to return your certificates and have new ones issued. Recently, a stock I own split three-for-one. That didn’t triple the value of what I own (at least not immediately). I now own three times as many shares; initially, they were each at one-third the original price, but as they grow (knock wood), my value increases. But I didn’t have to fuss with certificates, because my shares are held in book entry form.

Usually, the only drawback to having no pretty certificates to hang on your wall is aesthetic. (Of course, you could always take a high resolution picture and then return the certificates to the brokerage, requesting transfer to book entry form.) However, there’s an outside chance of difficulty if you:

• Lose your your account and certificate numbers, and
• Change your name (for marriage, to become a Hollywood star or to go on the lam from the law) without notifying your brokerage company or transfer agent, and
• Move but forgot to notify the brokerage company or transfer agent.

If the certificates were the only proof of ownership, and you lost the numbers and any way for the brokerage company to find or identify you, not having certificates would be a toughie. However, this confluence of events is really, really unlikely — far less likely than you losing your certificates!

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So, let’s assume you DID actually receive a stock certificate at some point, didn’t return it to your brokerage house for safekeeping, and can’t find it in any of the likely (or unlikely) locations. If you believe it was lost, stolen, destroyed by fire, flood or spontaneous combustion, what can you do?

1) Gather whatever information you have (including photocopies of the certificates) regarding the original stock purchase, including:

• Estimated date of stock purchase
• Exact name you believe is embossed on the certificates
• Name of purchaser, if different from above
• Social Security number of owner

You’ll also need to supply an affidavit of proof that the certificate has been lost or stolen.

2) Contact your brokerage house or the transfer agent of the company in which you invested. Common transfer agents, the names of which probably appear on your quarterly statements, are:

American Stock Transfer & Trust (800-937-5449)
ComputerShare (800-328-9033)
ShareOwnerOnline (877-602-7397)
Wells Fargo Investments (866-243-0931)

If you still can’t find the information, ask your local librarian to help you search Standard & Poor’s Corporation Records to find the transfer agent for any given stock.

3) Have your brokerage house or transfer agent issue a stop transfer against the missing “security” or stock. They’ll report your certificate numbers to the Security and Exchange Commission’s program for lost and stolen securities. This keeps someone from transferring the stock from your name to theirs. Of course, if you ever find the original certificate, be sure to notify whomever you placed the “stop transfer” with to remove it, or you’ll never be able to sell your stock.

4) Buy an indemnity bond or surety bond (usually about 3% of the value of the stock). This is required in order to protect the company whose stock you own (and the transfer agent) against claims if an innocent purchaser of your certificate presents it for sale. Your transfer agent will recommend where to buy the bond.

The transfer agent will then reissue the stock certificate without further fuss. Yay!

In the future, if you purchase stock and decide to ignore Paper Doll‘s advice regarding keeping your purchase in street name or book entry form, please be sure to photocopy the fronts and backs of your stock certificates and maintain the copies and records of the certificate numbers separately from your actual certificates. For example, keep the certificates in your safe deposit box and the copies, including the certificate numbers, in your fireproof safe. If ever your stocks are sold or transferred erroneously, a transfer agent will be able to trace what happened via the certificate numbers.

As always, being organized will help you avert the inconvenience of lost time and money, two non- or not-very-renewable resources.

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Note: I am not a financial planner, and more importantly, I’m am not YOUR financial planner. This post should not be taken as advice to sell your stocks out of fear of a recession. If Paper Doll were a stock market expert, she’d have enough money to be blogging about her weekend in George Clooney’s Italian villa rather than paper clutter issues.

Experts point out that if we don’t understand the stock market well, we should either stay out of individual stocks (sticking to mutual funds) or seek the help of professionals who understand what’s going on. Sounds like good advice. I’m sure George Clooney would agree.

Paper Doll has a group of oh-so-masculine college buddies (Paper Action Figures, if you will). When any of our group has a baby, we pool resources to buy the little one a savings bond. Sure, savings bonds may seem a little archaic in this era of ETFs and online trading, but after all, we did go to college in the Pleistocene era. Where else can you buy something at half the face value, just add 20 or 30 years, and voila, you double your investment–guaranteed! Just recently, one of the Paper Action Figures and his wife adopted a beautiful little girl from China, and the Baby Bond Brigade was at it again.

They’re called SAVINGS bonds – not “Throwing-them-in-a-box-hidden-under-the-bed” bonds. If a special occasion brings a Federal savings bond into your life, “Do not pass Go and do not collect $200 dollars” until you do the following:

a) Record the savings bond certificate numbers by any (or all) of the following methods:

• Photocopy the bond certificates (This is quickest, provided you are not easily distracted into leaving your originals in copy machines, whether at work or Kinko’s)
• Scan the certificates (so you can keep digital copies on a password-protected flash drive or burned disc)
• Write down the certificate numbers, preferably in a spreadsheet that allows you to keep track of additional information (like date of receipt/purchase and date of maturation) and sort the data accordingly. If you don’t own Microsoft Excel or another spreadsheet program, there are multiple free spreadsheet programs (which we’ll discuss more in the future). Start with GoogleDocs or Zoho.com.
• Use the free Savings Bond Wizard developed by the Department of the Treasury to maintain and manage an inventory of your bonds.

b) Safeguard copies of the certificate numbers separate from your actual bonds. Keep the actual savings bonds in your safe deposit box at your bank, and keep the record of your certificate numbers in your fireproof safe. Better yet, also keep a digital copy of the certificate data in some other safe place (i.e., a burned disc in a responsible sibling’s safe deposit box, or digitally, in an online vault) so that in case of a widespread natural disaster in your area, the information might still be easily accessible from a distance.

That takes care of the future, but what about the past?

Did grandma buy you a Federal savings bond when you were born? Perhaps your parents saved some E or EE bonds you received for your birth, bar or bat mitzvah, confirmation, sweet sixteen, etc.? Maybe a wise relative gave you I-series bonds for your graduation or wedding? If you received those bonds more than 30 years ago, your bonds have likely stopped earning interest. The wisest course of action would be to cash them in so you can re-invest the money in other bonds, money markets, Wall Street, your (or your children’s) education, the improved value of your home, or some other worthwhile cause.

But to cash them in, you must have the bond certificates. Where, oh where, are the bonds? Perhaps know you saw them (but not so recently), or heard of their existence during a long-ago family chat.

If you’ve searched high and low and are sure you have savings bonds (either EE or the newer I-bonds), but can’t find your paperwork, here are some options to get you started:

Check your safe deposit box or fireproof safe—Free, except for the value of your time
(Ahem. This is why Paper Doll encourages (and by encourage, I, of course, mean nag) you to send papers, especially documents with financial value, to their “homes” as quickly as possible after receiving them.)

Search through those boxes of stuff your parents/guardians gave you when they retired to Boca, Phoenix or Shadytime Retirement Village. Again, free except for the value of your time.

Ask your parents (or grandparents, or former guardians) to check their safe deposit box(es) and/or fireproof safe(s) and send you (via secure shipping) your bond certificates—Variable cost: the value of your time (and theirs), the cost of a secure delivery service if they don’t live within driving distance, and the frustration you may feel if communicating with your loved ones involves a lot of shouting into the phone and repeating what you’ve just said.

Contact the Feds. To locate copies of and/or redeem Federal savings bonds, go to the U.S. Treasury’s website at www.TreasuryDirect.com and fill out Form 1048 to locate savings bonds registered all the way back to 1935. (Treasury trivia: EE savings bonds took the place of World War II era E-series or “Liberty bonds”, a practice, which itself dates back to President Wilson and WWI. Never let it be said Paper Doll isn’t educational!)

On Form 1048, you’ll be asked to provide as much information as possible, including the:

• Issue date (or a range of dates, if you are uncertain)
• Bond certificate numbers (hence my instructions near the top of this post)
• Inscription information on the bonds, including names, addresses as Social Security numbers.
• Whether the bonds were lost, stolen or destroyed. If the bonds were stolen and a police report was made, you will need to append that, as well.
• If you are not the named party on the bond certificate, you will have to explain your right to access the bonds; for example, are you the parent or guardian of a minor, the conservator or legal representative of another adult, or the executor of the will of a now-deceased party? (Note: if the person named on the bond is deceased, you will need to include a certified copy of the death certificate.)
• Be prepared to state whether you wish for substitute bonds or payment (in the form of a check or direct deposit)

You will need the form to be certified by a Notary Public; this service is almost certainly provided by your bank, accountant or attorney’s office. Some public libraries also have notaries on staff. (Nominal fees are determined by individual states.)

Finally, mail the form to the appropriate address:

For E, EE, or I-series savings bonds
Bureau of the Public Debt
Post Office Box 7012
Parkersburg, WV 26106-7012

For HH/H series savings bonds
Bureau of the Public Debt
Post Office Box 2186
Parkersburg, WV 26106-2186

All of the foregoing tells you what to do if you know you received the bonds, but they’ve since been lost, stolen or destroyed (i.e., irretrievably folded, spindled and mutilated). If, however, you purchased bonds and they have never arrived, or are trying to determine if you or a deceased loved owns/owned savings bonds, check out the Department of the Treasury’s Treasury Hunt link.

Beyond this, if you have more detailed questions, you can submit them to the Treasury Department via the following methods:

Savings Bonds/US Treasury
(304) 480-7711 (phone)
(304) 480-6010 (fax)

If someone was kind enough to start you down the road of savings with the gift of a Federal savings bond (especially if they did so before you were old enough to thank them), once you’ve made good use of the money, consider sending a letter of gratitude to share your story with your benefactor. (So says Paper Doll‘s mom, arbiter of all that is proper and just.)

You know that sinking feeling. You just had the directions, airline tickets, passport…and now they’re gone. Or you just (well, not that long ago) saw your insurance card, your prior year’s tax return, the envelope with the key to your safe deposit box…

Disorganization is cruel — when things are not assigned a home, we’re far less likely to notice when something is missing before we absolutely, positively need it. Because we tend to put things DOWN instead of putting them AWAY, finding something again when you need it is dependent upon remembering where we put it down. But of course, if we were paying that much attention to the item when we put it down, wouldn’t we have made the effort to put it where it belonged? Oy.

As we put more and more papers down, rather than away, our papers pile up like sedimentary rock layers, and we generally know that the items near the top are (relatively) recent, and the items near the bottom date from the Pleistocene era (when we sported bad perms and wore leg warmers). Of course, one unexpected tug from a toddler learning to toddle or one flourish of a conversational point made with sweeping arm movements can cause what the Earth Science teachers might have called disequilibrium due to shifting plate tectonics. (Don’t hold me to that; there was a really cute boy in my 9th grade Earth Science class.)

In most cases, if disorganization causes you lose an important paper, you can find an alternative or a replacement. Sometimes that involves ‘fessing up to the person who gave you the original contract or document, prostrating yourself with apologies and embarrassment and promising you’ll do better in the future. There are, however, some situations where you can get yourself in gear with minimal fuss.

For today’s example, let’s say you need your recent tax returns. As we discussed in the post on financial filing, you should save your tax returns forever, while the supporting material need only be archived seven years if you’re really short on space. However, there are many reasons why you’d need to be able to locate your last three years of tax returns:

• You’re being audited. (Ouch!)
• You’re ready to buy or build a new house and are applying for a mortgage. (Watch that interest rate!)
• You’re seeking vendor capital for a new business. (Welcome to entrepreneurship!)
• You’re trying to get a loan from a bank or lending institution. (Uncle Morty may not ask for your tax returns, but he also may come over unexpectedly and more often than you’d like to check how you’re spending the money.)

In the last three cases, lenders are going to want to verify your income; in the first case, I give you my sympathies. In any event, you don’t want to keep your potential lenders (or the IRS) waiting, but what if you can’t find every return?

Maybe you haven’t set up your family filing system yet. Or maybe your movers did a terrible job labeling boxes and you’re still being surprised when you open packing boxes, not knowing if you’ll find bunny slippers or rabbit ears (on an old TV). Or maybe (and I hope this is not your situation), you are a victim of Hurricane Katrina, the California wildfires or other natural disasters, which have separated you from your records or destroyed them altogether.

Whether you’ve climbed through hundreds of boxes (or have no boxes at all) and can’t find the right file, worry ye not! You can get replacements of your tax returns in the following ways:

Check your computer – if you used a commercial tax preparation product like TurboTax or Tax Cut, you should have a printable copy of your tax return right there on your hard drive. You may have to navigate the forms and files embedded in the software, but assuming you’ve still got the program installed, it’s an easy (if easily overlooked) option. Free!

Surf the web – if you used an online tax preparation, like TurboTax, you can access your prior year or years of tax returns from your “online vault”. Just log in with your password (or use their online function to have a forgotten password re-sent) and “Access Your Prior Years Returns” will be one of your main options. Just download the return in PDF form and print it out. Free!

Contact your tax preparer – if you hired a CPA or storefront service, you should be able to request a reprint of your return from their computer records. Fees vary on this; if you have a good relationship with your accountant and the return was simple, she may give you a free copy, or if your return was complicated, might impose a nominal copying free. Storefront services might charge a slightly higher fee, but it’s better than missing your audit.

Talk to the Feds – The IRS can provide copies of your returns from the past seven years. Just call 1-800-829-1040 or go to http://www.irs.gov/individuals/article/0,,id=110571,00.html and print and mail IRS Form 4506T Request for Transcript of Tax Return.

The “transcript” shows all the major lines from your return (1040, 1040A or 1040EZ) up until you filed it. It doesn’t show revisions made by you, your tax preparer or the IRS after your original filing. (For that, you’ll need to request an Account Transcript, also via IRS Form 4506T. The transcript is free and will suffice for mortgages and other lenders seeking to verify your income.

However, if you need a copy of a full tax return (for example, for an audit), you’ll need to fill out IRS Form 4506 Request for Copy of Tax Return, from http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f4506.pdf.
Note: the IRS will charge $39 per return.

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Lost And Found is a new periodic Paper Doll series. In future posts, we’ll talk about what to do if you lose your automobile title, stock and bond certificates, savings and Treasury bonds, and vital documents like birth certificates, passports and more.

But remember, just because you CAN replace lost documents with a little time, elbow grease and cash doesn’t mean that you should plan your life around these options. These are Plan B—the backup plans.

Keeping your paperwork organized and up-to-date is always Plan A. (“A”, as in the grade I did NOT get in 9th grade Earth Science, because I was trading glances at that cute boy. I should note, in 26 years, this is the first time I’ve needed to recall anything about plate tectonics, but organized papers have helped me practically every single day.  Just a thought.)