Standing at the Shredder

[bjarvis]

It's taken nearly an hour to shred the first pile of documents I selected last night. It's been a surprisingly cathartic experience.

I shredded the docs associated with my struggle to first obtain and than expand a credit history upon moving to the US. I had to deal with very unscrupulous and shady financial institutions --I didn't know the expression "sub-prime lending" until much later but it fits-- to get that first credit card. Still, I purchased items regularly and paid my bills immediately. With some arm-twisting at my local bank and surprising cooperation from the credit bureaux, I was eligible for less usurious Visa and Mastercards by 1998.

I shredded the household accounts, leases, cable bills, gas bills, electric bills, lawn maintenance bills, water bills, telephone bills, tax bills and insurance premiums from the years kent4str, paigemom and I shared a house together. God, it's nice not having to deal with a landlord anymore.

I shredded the documents, faxes, letters, invoices, cancelled checks and bank statements from my ancient contracting days. Tax records and receipts are still retained but they will expire in the next year or so.

I shredded my RRSP, IRA and 401(k) statements from the early 1990s through the dot com bubble and the early stages of the dot com bust; the tail-end of the bust is still recent enough I'm retaining those particular records.

I shredded five year certificates of deposits for 11.75% which matured long, long ago from institutions which no longer exist. The funds have been rolled over at least three different times to different retirement account managers by me and three additional times because of various corporate mergers. Does anyone remember Counsel Trust, North America Trust or Sun Trust anymore?

I shredded bank statements from the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (still in business), Central Guaranty Trust (bought by the Toronto-Dominion Bank) and Canada Trust (merged with TD to become TD-Canada Trust).

I shredded pay stubs and performance reviews from employers in the late 1980s and early 1990s. With only a handful of letters of reference, I no longer have any records of my years of employment when I lived in Canada. Surprisingly, I found a letter from Canada Pension Plan from 2001 indicating my pension at 65 would be worth $1,051/month based on my contributions to that point; I'll keep that letter.

There are still many files to be sorted and much to be shredded, but it's a good start.

Comments

[abqdan.livejournal.com]

Being anally retentive (no, really!) I set about shredding all my old documents a few years ago - but scanned them all to an archive disk first!

I recall a similar struggle to get credit established when I moved to the US. In my case, I finally got a Discover card - Visa and Mastcard wouldn't touch me. Discover wasn't easy either. I had a reference faxed to them from my British bank and Visa card company; then Discover called and said they were suspicious about the documents. Turns out they thought the paper size was 'odd' - England uses A4 as a standard - and the spelling in some words was incorrect... yes, it was a handful of all those 'u' letters that America has disguarded from the English language!

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

On the one hand, it's nice that the folks at Discover were being diligent about checking documents; on the other, it's a shame they weren't worldly enough to know not everything is done in the American style.

I was fortunate in that the credit agencies in Canada and the US are subsidiaries of the same parent corporations. Once I learned from the Experian office in Canada precisely how my US bank had to enter my particulars into the terminal, my local bank manager was suddenly able to reference my extensive Canadian credit history online. Sad that I needed to do the legwork and practically hold her hand through the experience, but the results were all in my favour when it was over.

As for scanning the lot, I considered it for some items but ultimately decided that if it's that important, I'd retain the original copy. It also helps that many of the contractor docs are already electronic files anyway.

One of my little projects now is to figure out how to check some 5.25" floppy disks I found to see what's on them...

[ozarque.livejournal.com]

That is genuinely impressive; good for you. I wish I could just find all the stuff I ought to shred....

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

Is it a matter of locating the stuff to shred among the files & piles, or that you can't find the files & piles at all? The former is time-consuming while the latter seems blissful. :-)

[paigemom.livejournal.com]

Wow, that IS some old history!

[billeyler.livejournal.com]

Shredding works, if you can stand all the time it takes. I tried that, then ended up burning 3/4 of it in the fireplace. And you're right. It's cathartic.

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

If it were winter, I would have used the fireplace; it would have saved a lot of time at the shredders. The AC is struggling to keep up with our heat & humidity already: I'm sure it would have died out of spite if I had burned the materials in the fireplace.

[billeyler.livejournal.com]

Good point...I did it in February during one of our colder snaps. Totally coincidental. The fireplace hasn't had such a hot fire blazing for such a long period of time in who knows when!