“There are a few exceptions but, generally, banks are obligated to seal a decedent’s safe deposit box until it is inventoried by a representative of the Department of Revenue.

The major exception to the general rule deals with boxes that are rented in the names of a husband and wife. With these boxes, upon the death of either spouse, the survivor is granted unrestricted access to the box. This exception exists because property owned jointly by spouses is exempt.” (http://www.estateattorney.com/safedepo.htm)

If you’re single, you might want to look at other alternatives.

Two thoughts, one, we need a similar show, called “Guide to Finances”. Some one with financial expertise shows up at your doorstep to raid your filing cabinet and your areas of your financial life :-)

Two, if our wardrobe warrants a checklist, maybe our finances do too.

Get a good shredder too.

I use a document scanner (mine is a $900 Fujitsu fi-5120C for Mac compatibility, but the Canon DR-2050C is excellent at $500 for Windows users) to scan all my incoming mail to PDF. The PDFs are then filed on the computer. I have a backup script that encrypts them, then copies them over the Internet to my computer at work for an off-site backup.

Once your main filing is done on your computer, you can shred unimportant papers, and keep a simple chronological file (one 6×8 clasp envelope per month). In the exceedingly unlikely event you need to retrieve a paper document, just look up the date of the document in the PDF (I stamp them with the date prior to scanning them). You can then retrieve the envelope for the month in question.

This filing system is much more compact (two years’ worth of mail fit easily in a standard desktop file), offers full backups in case your house burns down, and if you use OCR software your entire file can be indexed.

I documented my paper workflow in more detail here:
http://www.majid.info/mylos/weblog/2006/05/01-1.html

But I’ve resolved to go paperless. I already have Mozy backing everything up off-site at 5am every morning (free!), and I have plenty of local backups.

Also love the tip about finding PDFs on the web for instruction manuals — hadn’t thought of that, but will do.

Finally, re: identity theft — any California resident who hasn’t taken advantage of the law allowing California residents to ‘lock’ their credit is crazy. You have to send letters to the three credit service bureaus and pay a small fee, but once that’s done, no one can destroy your credit. The only hassle is that if you want to buy a car, you will have to make a phone call ahead of time to unlock your credit to apply for the loan. But it’s a lot better than finding out someone ELSE bought a car under your name!

Title of article: How to organize all of your financial documents in a filing cabinet

Quote from article: There is no tried-and-true method of organizing your information.

True subject of article: How to choose, and what to put into, a filing cabinet.

Amount of information on how to ORGANIZE financial documents in article: 1 paragraph, towards the end.

Would this perhaps be a better method? I hate paper.

Keep your id info in yor safe box only and away from anything that can be used to gain access to your finances or your identity. Imagine how much valuable info would be lost is someone carted off your filing cabinet (a lot lighter and less secure than a safe). Imagine the mad dash you’d have to do then.