We look at where you should keep all your most important documents and papers to protect against theft, damage, and loss.
It’s inevitable: throughout your life you’ll amass a huge number of paper documents. Starting with your birth certificate and ending with your death certificate, plus all the countless papers in between – from passports, insurance and mortgage documents to marriage certificates.
Many of these documents will be invaluable in that if lost or damaged they would be impossible to replace, but their nature also dictates that you will have to produce them at different points in your life, meaning they need to be accessible. So where’s the best place to keep all these important documents?
Vehicle insurance
If you have taken out insurance for a vehicle, there’s one golden rule: keep a copy of your insurance papers plus the number you’d need to ring to make a claim in your vehicle at all times.
This applies to car insurance, motorbike insurance, van insurance, caravan insurance, and breakdown cover. If you are ever pulled over while driving you may need to produce these documents to prove your vehicle is insured – plus, if you had an accident all the details would be right there in your vehicle for you to access.
Either the original documents or a copy of them should then be kept at home, safely tucked away in a file.
Travel insurance
When you take out travel insurance you’ll often be given an information booklet with a number to ring in case you need to make a claim. This should be kept in a safe place with your luggage,preferably your hand luggage, so you’d be able to access it in a hurry if you needed to.
A copy of this plus your other travel insurance documents should be left at home with somebody you know and trust, so that if necessary they would be able to contact the insurance company if you couldn’t and were stranded, for example.
Home insurance
One copy of your home insurance documents should be safely filed away at home, where you would be able to access it if you needed it. However as an extra level of protection you should give another copy to a friend or neighbour so that if a fire or flood occurred in your house and your documents were damaged, you would still have another copy elsewhere.
To be extra safe and if you live in an area prone to natural disasters such as flooding or earthquakes, give a copy to a friend who lives in an entirely different area of the country.
And all the rest...
The following important documents should be kept in your home preferably in a well-organised file that you can access when you need to, but that wouldn’t be easily visible or accessible to thieves:
- Mortgage documents
- Credit card statements
- Bank account statements
- Birth certificate
- Passport
- Driving licence
- Marriage certificate
- Any emergency medical information
- Bills
- Pay slips
- Tax information
In terms of how to file these things you don’t need a fancy filing system; a storage box, file drawer or Lever-Arch file will do. It may help to divide the files alphabetically so that you or a family member could locate the necessary file quickly if there was an emergency.
To be extra safe, you might consider investing in a box that is fireproof and/or waterproof for your particularly valuable files, or even asking at your bank for the use of a safe deposit box. Safe deposit boxes can only be accessed during your bank’s opening hours but they can provide a real fortress of protection for things like adoption certificates or proof of identity.
It’s also worth noting that not all of these documents need to be filed indefinitely; bank and credit card statements can be shredded after a few months, as can bills. Pay slips can be shredded at the end of the tax year (5th April).
Safe is better than sorry
Finally, though you might think making copies of your documents and carefully filing them away isn’t worth the hassle, just think about the consequences if the worst did happen – sometimes a small amount of hassle is a fair trade-off for a huge amount peace of mind.
Getting your paperwork in order will also mean that you have an easily accessible point of comparison when it's time for you to shop around for a new insurance policy, mortgage, savings account and the like.
