Best Results Organizing

A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.

~Samuel Goldwyn

Before Thanksgiving, we talked about the first category in the family/personal file system. With FINANCIAL items out of the way, we can move on to the next important category: LEGAL.

Financial
Legal
Medical
Household
Personal

If you had a fender bender over Thanksgiving weekend, would you have known where to find your insurance policy? If your nephew taunted your daughter that she was left on the doorstep by elves and not really yours, could you smooth her worries by pulling out her birth certificate?

While we tend to deal with financial paperwork on a daily basis, occasional mislaid LEGAL paperwork causes the greatest panic. To keep things running smoothly, break your legal papers down into some basic subcategories:

VIPs (Very Important Papers) generally prove you are you who you say you are. In most cases, keep the originals in a safe deposit box, or failing that, a fireproof safe, and maintain photocopies in your family/personal files. Each person in the family should have a VIP folder, including:

• Birth certificates – prove identity and age
• Adoption records – prove identity and age
• Marriage certificates –prove identity in order to collect insurance and benefits (like Social Security and veterans’ pensions)
• Divorce decrees – prove you qualify for remarriage
• Military records –prove qualifications to collect medical, education, and other benefits
• Citizenship/Naturalization papers – prove you qualify to vote and hold certain jobs and elected offices
• Death certificates – to collect benefits and settle estates
• Passports – to prove identity for travel
• Social Security cards – to qualify for benefits

Guard your Social Security card/number as if it were worth millions of dollars; identity theft is pernicious, and the value of safeguarding your SSN is incalculable.

Estate/End of Life Papers
People often skip this category, either because it’s dismal or they feel they don’t have enough assets to be concerned. However, you don’t need to qualify for Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous to take care of your estate documents. As with the VIPs, most of these will be kept in your safe deposit box (or on file with your attorney or the county in which you live), but keep photocopies of the following in your files:

• Wills
• Trusts
• Funeral Plans and Instructions
• Advanced Health Care Directive/Living Will – specifies your preferred “end of life” care, your health care proxy and oher
• Power of Attorney/Durable Power of Attorney (for financial and/or health care) – Be sure the “agent” you have designated has a copy

I am not a lawyer, and even if I played one on television, I am not YOUR lawyer. However, in general, a “power of attorney” authorizes someone to make legal and financial decisions on your behalf while you are alive but unable to act (say, if you are out of the country or otherwise unreachable because you’re trapped in the Big Brother house); if you are incapacitated due to illness or injury, only a “DURABLE Power of Attorney” allows someone to make your essential decisions.

Titles of Ownership
If you go to the effort and expense of purchasing something, make sure you can prove it’s yours. There are some obvious sub-categories:

• Real estate—Keep copies of the deeds and mortgage paperwork for any house, building or piece of land (including private island getaway). Note the exact transaction date of purchase/sale, the gross price and the cost of any legal fees. You’ll need this data for tax prep when you eventually sell any property. Keep track of easements and liens here, as well. Keep a separate folder for each piece of property you own.
• Automobile—maintain the title in a folder for each auto you own
• Boat/Airplane title (and bill of sale)—again, keep a folder for each

In other words, if you own something big enough to live on (or in) or pilot from one place to another, be sure you can prove it’s yours.

Note: your property insurance policy will go under the Insurance subcategory (below) and receipts for payments on mortgages will go in the FINANCIAL section, as we’ve already discussed.

Contracts
Do you recall the recent hubbub when Ellen DeGeneres failed to read the details of her dog adoption contract? Yikes! Make sure you have any legally-binding contracts carefully filed so you can review the details. Remember employment contracts and other agreements for services to be rendered, as well as promissory notes (for loans to or from you). If you’re in your twenties, you may not have any/many such papers, but as your contract file grows, you’ll want a separate file for each.

Insurance policies
Although your insurance agent (whose phone number should be programmed into your cell phone) can look up your coverage, you should maintain a copy of all policies, including:

• Health insurance (medical, dental, vision, other specific policies)
• Homeowner’s insurance
• Renter’s insurance
• Auto/Boat/Plane insurance
• Miscellaneous property policies
• Umbrella policies

Keep your policies filed, be sure to have your most current health insurance card in your wallet, and proof of auto insurance in your glove compartment. (The latter is the law in many states.)

Depending on your personal background, you may have other important legal dealings. For example:

Department of Motor Vehicles
For the average law-abiding citizen, the DMV folder may just hold some handy photo-copies of your driver’s license and auto registration. But I have a few clients who have been known to exceed the speed limit or have had some run-ins with the boys in blue regarding parking or traffic infractions. Keeping a file for these legal wranglings (including tickets, summonses, proof of attendance at traffic court and traffic school, etc.) can help with insurance and legal issues down the road.

Divorce or Custody Proceedings
Family court issues are never fun, but frustration can be lessened by keeping the paperwork easily accessible. One of my clients had some disagreements with her ex-husband about certain custody arrangements and had to get the authorities involved. Being able to quickly lay hands on her paperwork gave her the edge in resolving the situation. File divorce and custody paperwork in reverse chronological order.

Depositions and Testimony
You may have been an expert (or other kind of) witness, providing testimony or giving depositions. If the case is ongoing or is in the appeals process, you will want to maintain a record of your prior statements.

Every family’s legal situation is unique — if your family has a unique legal issue, create a new hanging folder and interior folders and label them accordingly. Basically, if it’s a legal document or about a legal situation, either the original or the photocopy (if the original is kept by your attorney, county or in your safe deposit box) belongs in the LEGAL section of your files. However, if it’s a financial item (insurance premium, legal bill, alimony payment record, etc.), even one related to legal categories, it belongs in the financial section.

Next time: Medical Files

Got no check books, got no banks. Still I’d like to express my thanks – I got the sun in the morning and the moon at night.

Not what we say about our blessings, but how we use them, is the true measure of our thanksgiving.

Are you reading this post while waiting for everyone to get ready to go? Perhaps you’re going to fill up the gas tank on the way to Grandma’s for Thanksgiving. Maybe you’re going to the grocery store to get the Butterball turkey or to the mall to start shopping for presents. It’s likely that filing is not foremost on your mind…but please bear with me.

Last week, we covered the first of the five family/personal file categories:

• Financial
• Legal
• Medical
• Household
• Personal

Since we’re finishing up financial filing, and as we’re just moments away from Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and the start of the Receipt Season, you may be wondering, “What do I do about receipts?”

So, let’s look at some basic rules to help you figure out what to do with all of those receipts rushing into your life over the next month:

• Keep cash receipts for things you might return, and for the duration return period only. If you pay for a McDonald’s Happy Meal in cash, toss the receipt — it’s not like you’re going to be returning that baked apple pie you ate yesterday. If you purchase toys or clothing for cash and the store’s return policy is 30 days, discard your receipt after that period.

• Keep all receipts for big ticket items (set your own benchmark–it could be $50 or $500, depending on your lifestyle) and things you might return, but only until the return period has expired. Recently, the IRS has allowed taxpayers to choose between deducting state taxes and sales tax; if you opt for sales tax, the default amount is usually your best bet, but if you’ve purchased a house, car or boat, you’ll want proof of that big ticket deduction.

• Keep all receipts for tax-deductible expenses such as charitable donations and medical expenses in your Tax Prep folder until you’ve completed your taxes. (You won’t know until the end of the year whether you’ve accumulated a high enough percentage of your adjusted gross income to deduct most expenses.) Did you know your pharmacy will print a summary of all prescription purchases? Instead of keeping your pharmaceutical receipts indefinitely, just ask your pharmacy to give you a printout at mid-year and again in January for the preceding calendar year. (Of course, if you use a different pharmacy — for example, when you’re on vacation — save those receipts.)

• Keep receipts for all items for which you are due reimbursement until you get paid. Most often, this will include purchases submitted on your expense reports at work. Less regularly, you’ll submit receipts to your insurance company for repairs done to your home or auto, or for medical procedures where the doctor’s office won’t file on your behalf. Occasionally, you’ll even have to submit the receipts to someone else’s insurance company if the other party was at fault. Be sure to keep photocopies (or better yet, provide photocopies and keep the originals).

• Keep credit card receipts and deposit and ATM withdrawal tickets until your credit card or bank statements have arrived. Reconcile the receipts against the statements, and if the receipts don’t fit any other mentioned category, shred them.

Following these general rules should keep you protected in terms of financial, legal (proof of ownership) and most tax issues. However, if in addition to Federal taxes, you also pay state and local taxes, check with a tax professional regarding any state- and municipal-tax reasons to keep other receipts. For example, Minnesota has two programs that allow residents to save on their state taxes for K-12 educational expenses. As we discussed last week, these receipts would go in your FINANCIAL files category, in a Tax Prep folder.

Have fun shopping this Thanksgiving week, whether at the stores or online. I encourage you to purchase clutter-free gifts that don’t have to be stored or dusted.

Whatever you buy, have a system for collecting your receipts until you get home. Check receipts for accuracy before leaving the store and then put them neatly in your wallet, purse or (if you carry neither) an envelope in your pocket. This year, resolve not to have any crumpled receipts in your pockets or the bottoms of your shopping bags.

Happy Thanksgiving, and I’ll see you back here next Tuesday.

Next up: Legal and Medical files

Last week, we talked about how easy it can be to get your filing done, if only each item has a home. When I mentioned that everything fits perfectly in one of five categories:

• Financial
• Legal
• Medical
• Household
• Personal

I received protestations that some items that could not possibly fit into these categories. So, I offer a guarantee…whoever writes in will get a response right here at Paper Doll to show how various and sundry items in need of filing can fit one of these five categories. Yes, even last year’s Christmas budget. Yes, even baptismal certificates. Yes, even instructions on how to change the time on the VCR now that Congress has confused us all with new Daylight Savings Time schedules.

Today, we’ll start with our first category…please return each week, as we’ll be continuing this subject in future posts.

FINANCIAL paperwork is any family’s largest section, because most of the paper we get is in service to little green pieces of paper of which we wish we could keep more. Generally, financial files keep track of money coming IN, money going OUT, and the money that we are GROWING for future needs. The financial paperwork we receive or create usually breaks down into these sub-categories:

OUTGOING MONEY
Monthly and/or regular statements regarding the money you’re sending away—what businesses call ACCOUNTS PAYABLE. When you get a bill, you tear off the stub to mail back with your payment (assuming you’re not doing online bill-pay), and are left with the larger, non-stub portion from:

• Monthly or periodic household/family bills (e.g., rent/mortgage, utilities, insurance, etc.)
• Credit cards statements
• Loans (e.g., home equity, auto, college, personal, etc.)
• Medical bills (for which you have an ongoing payment plan)
• Anything else being paid on a regular or predictable basis (e.g., piano lessons, tuition, personal chef, professional organizer, fitness trainer) for which you wish to keep careful records

Label a hanging folder (or a few, if necessary) for each sub-category, and then label (and alphabetize) your interior folders within each sub-sub-category. It doesn’t matter if you use generic terms (cable, power, water) or company-specific (Comcast, MyCity Power, Valley Water Authority)…just be sure to choose labels that reflect how you think. If your system is complicated, you’ll find excuses not to use it. Stay simple.

For credit cards, if you have more than one card from any one issuing company, you may want to put the last four digits of the card number on the label (Discover -1234, Discover -9876), just to help you file quickly.

INCOMING MONEY
Information regarding incoming revenue comes next—in business, we call these ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE. (If you have an actual business, keep financial files separate from family/personal files. This will be a subject of a future post.)

For most of us, incoming revenue reflects pay stubs from employment, but this sub-category can also include alimony or child support payments, Social Security income, disability payments, IRA disbursements, personal loan repayments (to you), lottery winnings and stock-dividends (if not part of a dividend reimbursement plan). If you’re regularly getting money from any source, or have gotten a large lump sum for something other than employment, this is where you should keep your records.

TRANSITIONAL MONEY
Some financial records represent what you are doing to your money, but others show what your money is doing, with or without you. Bank statements for checking, savings, and trusts represent collections of funds that are often in transition. They may accrue interest or have fees associated with them, so take time each month to make sure these accounts reflect what you think they should.

Brokerage statements reflect investment information. You’ll separate these by investment type: retirement, college savings, goal-related (like a vacation fund or Christmas Club account), first, and further sub-categorize (and alphabetize) by company. So, in the Retirement hanging folder, you might have interior folders for your 401(k), an old 403(b), IRAs with Fidelity and Vanguard, and so on. Each account will have its own folder.

SIMULATED MONEY
Do you ever wonder what to do with paper that isn’t money, but is nonetheless valuable? This subcategory is generally where you’ll keep records reflecting monetary value. It’s not money in your pocket, but it’s the equivalent.

These files might include quarterly or annual statements reflecting either regular or atypical benefit plans for your job, such as if you’re vested in an employee-ownership stock program.

You can also have a folder in this section for gift certificates, gift cards and store credits so you can keep track of what monetary value you posses or are owed.

However, do not keep stock certificates, Bearer Bonds, or other valuable paperwork in your general family files. Papers of significant value should either be kept in your safe deposit box or in a fire-proof safe.

TAXES
When dealing with taxes, you want to first consider what you’ll need to prepare your upcoming tax returns.

For the CURRENT year, I always suggest having at least one tax-prep folder, but you can expand upon that idea and have one for medical expense records, one for charitable donation records and a third for “other” tax deductible items. This January, when you start receiving W-2s and 1099s, you should immediately carry them to your filing system and pop them in your TAX PREP 2007 file folders.

While you must maintain careful tax records and supporting information, you only need to keep the most recent year or two in your active family/personal files. If you’re short on space, everything else can go into easily-accessed file archives, such as in a banker’s box.

FINANCIAL HISTORY and LIFE
It’s important to maintain control over your financial and credit history. To do this, check and download your free credit reports from the three major credit bureaus on an annual basis. You can keep them in a folder entitled Credit History (isn’t that creative?) – it’s not necessary to keep a separate folder for each report from Equifax, Experian and Trans-Union.

This is the ideal sub-section to keep your Social Security statement folder. Each year, approximately six weeks prior to your birthday, the Social Security Administration mails you a statement of the current status of your account. (It’s printed in black and green ink on white paper and looks like a short brochure.) It’s important to save these statements to plan your retirement needs; be sure to check the accuracy of the statement before filing it away each year.

[Editor’s note: Since the original publication date, Social Security has ceased mailing statements; you can access your statement online, as we discussed previously. Printing copies, or making PDFs of them, so that you can keep your own records, is still a good idea.]

This sub-section would also be where you could keep a printout of your monthly budget spreadsheet or holiday budget, your Big Ticket receipt file to keep track of information on large purchases, as well as any other records you have regarding your financial history or plans.

For each of these sub-categories, within each folder, it’s usually best to file in reverse chronological order. You’re more likely to need to quickly access something that’s recently been filed.

That’s it. Your financial files represent money going out, money coming in, money sitting around (and hopefully growing), pseudo-money, the money information you have to provide to the government…and the history of your financial life.

Since we’re talking about finances, the question always arises, “What do I do about receipts?” Next week is Thanksgiving, and you’re likely to amass a large number of receipts on “Black Friday“, so we’ll be finishing our conversation on financial files by talking about keeping receipts.

Coming up after Thanksgiving: Legal and Medical files

“Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.”

I’m sure you’ll be scandalized to hear this, but even professional organizers procrastinate. As much as I love organizing papers and files for my clients and am Johnny-on-the-spot with my business files, I’ve been known to delay filing my personal papers. On Sunday, unwilling to let the To File box taunt me any longer, I decided I’d start the Month of Gratitude by being thankful the papers were put away. If you’re worried about clearing the paper clutter before the holidays, read on…

These loose papers were the same kind you have: credit card and utility statements, insurance company explanations of benefits, an automobile club renewal confirmation, thank-you letters from charities and the odd magazine clipping profiling a dream vacation. And while I procrastinated on three months’ worth of filing (in the same way I find every excuse to avoid emptying the dishwasher), I was happy in the knowledge that it would be a completely painless task.

How long did it take me to file away three months’ worth of papers?

42 minutes. It took the entirety of Face the Nation (Bob Schieffer is my silver-haired imaginary TV Newsman Boyfriend) plus a dozen minutes of SpongeBobSquarePants. (Hey, how can a girl resist a guy who lives in a pineapple under the sea?)

Why was it such a quick and easy job?

Certainly not due to any miraculous Professional Organizer genes. But I’ve got a great system. Just as we can empty the dishwasher seemingly by rote because we know exactly where everything goes, filing away personal papers can be a snap if each item has a home.

And it wasn’t quick and easy because I have some fancy filing cabinet that fills me with aesthetic delight–I don’t! I keep my personal files in a plastic milk-crate style filing box, which I bought for $6.99. A large family with complex financial or legal dealings might want multiple file crates, or might want to invest in a filing cabinet or lockable file box, but it’s easiest to start small.

To get your personal/family files in order, you just need these basics:

1) A container that holds hanging folders
Choose as simple or as fancy as you like, from a cardboard bankers box to a plastic crate to a metal or wood filing cabinet. If you’re often mobile, you can even try a portable file box on wheels.

2) Hanging folders
Choose the standard (ugly) green, enjoy multi-colored versions even if you don’t plan to color-code, or pick something high-falutin’ for inspiration. Hanging folders divide the major sections or categories, but if colors and patterns increase your motivation, go for it!

3) Interior folders
Again, it doesn’t matter if you stick with plain vanilla manila, or go for pretty and fancy, as long as you use the folders to separate the sub-categories of your life-on-paper.

4) A labelmaker
This can be your hand-held thick Sharpie, or you can opt for something a little higher tech.

5) Trust in yourself that the piles of papers will soon be conquered.

In the coming posts, Paper Doll is going to help you transform your filing system (or lack thereof) into a simple structure.  It’ll be sensible and as easy as (eating) pie to get your reference papers off the dining table and filed away so they’ll be easily retrievable in the future.

There are many filing systems out there to fit every personality. Filing merely seems difficult because there are so many options. Clients ask me—should everything be alphabetical? Should I separate files for my kids from my own? Should I use a numerical system like Paper Tiger for my household papers? Maybe you have no filing system or maybe you have a complex one that frustrates you. It doesn’t matter how you’ve dealt with papers in the past—this month is a clean slate.

There are no hard and fast rules regarding where you have to keep documents–the home office or the kitchen, upstairs or downstairs; the point is that papers must be kept where you can retrieve them quickly and logically. This includes labeling folders clearly so that they make sense to you.

In Paper Doll World, simplicity and ease of access is key, and that starts with keeping related things together, rather than necessarily alphabetizing or assigning arbitrary numbers. Family (or, if you’re a singleton like me, personal) files are based on just five MAIN categories:

• Financial—money in, money out, money you’ll get when you’re Bob Schieffer’s age, taxes and your financial history
• Legal—the VIPs (very important papers) and contracts that keep you protected
• Medical—your personal medical history (but not the medial bills)
• Household—everything to keep your household running, from product manuals to remodeling plans
• Personal—your educational and career history, plus all your personal interests.

That’s it! Absolutely every personal or family reference paper will fit one of these categories–there’s no need for the stress-inducing “miscellaneous” category. In the next few posts, I’ll be talking about the specifics of what belongs in each of these areas. For now, just collect your essentials, pull all your loose reference papers (i.e., the stuff for which the only To Do is “to file”) in one stack, and I’ll meet you back here next Tuesday…without delay!

“This recipe is certainly silly. It says to separate the eggs, but it doesn’t say how far to separate them.”

I like to imagine that Gracie Allen’s kitchen was much like her on-screen persona: charming, but a bit addled…with mismatched paper scraps fluttering around her like so much snowy flaked coconut.

Even when we eliminate all the things that don’t belong in our kitchens, our Food HQs are often littered with clipped and copied recipes, cooking magazines, regular and diet-related cookbooks, and more. Kitchen clutter is often a sticky mess, preventing us from ever finding the perfect recipe when we want or need it.

The toys and clothes that surround us may no longer be age-appropriate, size-appropriate or lifestyle-appropriate. Similarly, we can outgrow cookbooks, diets and recipes that once fit us so well. It may be time to part amicably with Macrobiotic for a Groovy Life or 172 Ways To Lose Weight With Grapefruit. To downsize your own cookbook collection, ask yourself:

Have I used a recipe from this cookbook in the past year?

If you use the cookbook heavily, even in just one season, keep it. If you seek it out frequently but only for the same one or two recipes, copy out what you use and set the cookbooks free. And, if you can’t remember the last time you opened it, the book has become a stranger in your home—send it away. Your options are to:

• Donate the cookbook to your local library book sale or a book-related charity (or even Harvard)
• Sell it at a local used book store or online
• Store it elsewhere than your kitchen. If you have the bookshelf space elsewhere in your home, store extraneous cookbooks as you would history or reference books.

In the future, test-drive a cookbook to see if it’s a good fit by borrowing it from friends or the library before making a purchase.

For the piles of loose recipes clipped out of magazines or copied after tasting a friend’s culinary triumph, select one recipe at a time and follow these simple rules:

1) SEPARATE DREAMS FROM REALITY: Will I ever really cook this?

We have to be honest with ourselves and realize that if the fanciest thing we cook is spaghetti, we’re not really going to be dabbling in egg drop soup or meringue flamb from scratch. If your lifestyle is such that you, your spouse and your kids aren’t home until 15 minutes before stomachs start rumbling, cookbooks concentrating on dishes that require all-day loving attention just don’t fit your lifestyle.

If the photos with those recipes are truly dazzling but out of your reach, create a “Dream Recipes” folder to keep in your files along with dream vacations and dream decorating ideas. You can preserve the dream without cluttering your kitchen.

2) DIVIDE AND CONQUER: Under what category does this recipe fall?
Pretend you’re a cookbook editor and come up with some major categories, and then add the ones that fit your family’s dining style:

• Appetizers
• Salads
• Entres
• Desserts
• Ethnic meals (sub-divided by region)
• Holiday food
• Picnic meals
• Allergy-free recipes
  

Once you have a healthy stack for each category (and are certain you’re really going to attempt to cook each item), you’re ready for the final step.

3) PUBLISH YOUR OWN COOKBOOK:

Buy a fat three-ring notebook and a box of transparent, plastic sheet protectors and slide the recipes into the sheet protectors. If a recipe is continued on the back of a page, you’ll be able to see the front and reverse easily; if the recipe is continued on another page, place it back to back with the prior page. The sheet protectors keep the recipes from getting damaged or sticky and can be easily cleaned with a sponge. Use simple subject dividers to separate the categories.

If you’re not a do-it-yourselfer, consider this pre-made Cookbook Binder Tabs Kit from OnlineOrganizing.com.

And don’t forget, the Internet can often replace printed recipes. For example, sometimes you can just type a short list of ingredients into Google, and you’ll be led to various recipe options. You can also search for recipes at these helpful sites, often by recipe name, category or just ingredients:

• Epicurious
• Reluctant Gourmet
• The Food Network
• For a list of many other recipe sites, check out Best Cooking Sites.

Keep the recipe clutter to a minimum — you’ll have more space to cook and dine well, and you’ll have more time to enjoy your meals and dining companions.

Say goodnight, Gracie!