Annual Template

You can save time and make your records more consistent by creating template folders. Use an underscore character as a prefix on the folder name. This makes the template folder show before the other file and folder names. You can then copy the template folder, paste it where you need it, and then rename the copied template folder.

You can start with my folder templates and modify them to suite your needs. Notice how the template folder starts with an underscore character. If a file/folder name start with an underscore then it appears before the items with alphanumeric names. This makes the template entries appear at the top of sorted directory lists. In the _Template_Annual folder I have these subfolders:

_Template_Annual

/Bank
/CreditCard
/Education
/HealthCare
/Investment
/Invoices
/Receipts_Home
/Receipts_Business
/Taxes
/Utilities

As you pay your bills online download a copy of the statement and save it in the appropriate records folder. This takes very little time, you are already on the website to pay your bill, and you will have a digital statement for your records. I save statements from banks, credit cards, utilities, healthcare providers, investments, etc. I then use these digital statement when balancing my accounts in my personal accounting software.

A few times during the year I digitize receipts, tax documents, and any other documents that might be useful in the future. If I saved all of these papers and digitized them all at once it would probably take about 4 hours per year. I have records going all the way to college and they easily fit on a small thumb drive.