How long to keep documents

Half the paper in the filing cabinet can go. The other half you'll want years from now, with a bad photocopy standing between you and proof. Here is the line between them.

How long to keep documents has a short honest answer — it depends on what the document can still prove — and a usable one, which is this page. The rules below are the widely applicable ones, US-leaning where tax rules are concerned; when your country or situation differs, its rule wins.

Keep forever

Birth, marriage, divorce, and death certificates; adoption and citizenship papers; military discharge records; Social Security cards.
Wills, trusts, powers of attorney, healthcare directives — the current versions, with superseded ones destroyed so nobody acts on the wrong will.
Records of major medical events — diagnoses, surgeries, immunizations. Portals age out; your history shouldn't.
Pension and retirement plan basis records, and home-improvement receipts while you own the home — they adjust taxable gain when you sell, often decades later.

Keep while you own it, plus a tail

Homes: deeds, closing documents, improvement receipts — until several years after the sale clears its tax return.
Vehicles: titles and service records until sold; the maintenance file is also resale money.
Anything under warranty: the receipt for the life of the coverage — see warranty tracking for why that fails in practice.
Insurance policies: while active, plus any window in which a claim from that period could still arise — occurrence-based claims can surface after the policy year ends.

Tax records — the one with real numbers

Three years is the standard IRS audit window from filing, so returns plus supporting evidence (W-2s, 1099s, deduction receipts) keep at least that long.
Six years if income was underreported by more than 25% — the window the IRS gets for large omissions. Cautious filers simply use six as the default.
Seven years for claims involving bad-debt deductions or worthless securities.
No limit where no return was filed. And the returns themselves are small — many people keep every return forever and only cull the supporting paper.

Short-lived paper

Pay stubs: until the year's W-2 arrives and matches. Bank and card statements: about a year — longer only if they support a tax position, at which point they inherit the tax timeline.
Utility bills: until the next one confirms payment — unless they feed a home-office deduction (tax timeline again) or you'll want them as proof-of-address.
Medical bills and EOBs: a year past resolution, longer if disputes or deductions are in play.
Ordinary receipts: until the return window closes on the purchase. Receipts for warranties, taxes, or insurance claims graduate to those timelines.

Before the shredder

Two rules save the most regret. A document can serve several clocks at once — a receipt can be warranty proof, a tax deduction, and insurance-claim evidence; it lives on the longest applicable clock. And digitize before destroying: scanned records are accepted for most purposes including tax, storage costs nothing, and “keep forever” stops being a burden the moment it isn't a box.

Where Drawer fits

Once the paper is digital, the question stops being “how long do I keep this” and becomes “can I find it when it matters” — which is the problem Drawer works on: snap or forward documents, get them named and filed with every date extracted, and keep them findable by the whole household for as long as forever turns out to be. Private beta; waitlist here.

Questions people actually ask

Are scanned copies legally good enough?

For most purposes, yes — tax authorities including the IRS accept legible digital records, and everyday proof (receipts, statements, bills) works fine scanned. The short list that must stay physical: documents whose original signature or seal is the point, like wills, some deeds, and certified certificates.

Why keep home-improvement receipts for decades?

Because they raise your home's cost basis, which lowers the taxable gain when you sell — possibly thirty years from now. It's the clearest case of paper that looks dead for decades and then converts directly into money, once, at the end.

Is there anything I genuinely should shred rather than just toss?

Anything carrying account numbers, ID numbers, or signatures — statements, pre-approved credit offers, old IDs, medical paperwork. Discarded mail is a boring, effective identity-theft channel, and shredding is the cheap countermeasure.