Attempting to put order into chaos, one such chaos is the forest of old paperwork I have on long since gone debts.

I'm not talking about anything current (as in live accounts) but more on old credit card alleged debts from the last decade, they are all either settled/done with/stayed or stat barred....

Is there a need to keep all the paperwork to the now stat barred debts? Settled Debts/ done with (old accounts that i've simply closed down) Some of them are stat barred by 6+ years, others 4 years stat barred.

I'm keeping the paperwork on all live accounts/stayed accounts as these may be needed at some point, but the rest I'm thinking they should be shredded/burned?

Hmm, I know what you mean......I literally have the very last correspondence from the toothless DCA chasing the debt/s at the time, and I'm going back to 2006........

IMO unless you want to keep them, just to laugh at, and reflect on how corrupt and illegal their practices were (at that time) then why not keep them? Otherwise, it makes very good hamster bedding..!

use a scanner!!

put it all on your PC and copy it to a cheap penstick as a back up.

sort the paperwork into relevant piles

I usually use the named original creditor and their Account number.

SCAN EVERYTHING TO PDF

yes, absolutely. Although it's a nuisance to catch up on your scanning – there is then no risk that you will never regret it. I scan everything that comes in each day and then shred the paper

In addition to keeping a copy on my computer, I use Microsoft one drive which ensures that there is a copy on the cloud.

You never know, maybe while you are going through it you will find some PPI somewhere. That could be a very nice reward.

I use a program called PaperPort by a company called Nuance to help me organise my documents. I've been using it for years and it is an extremely helpful document management system - https://shop.nuance.fr/store/nuanceeu/DisplayProductDetailsPage/ProductID.234555100/Currency

Onedrive is great but you can get better storage allowances from Google Drive (15 Gb)

Good if you want to scan High Quality Uploads of the rubbish they spout ^_^

I wish i hadn't asked I've never thought about scanning the docs, ever! I so wish I had but there must be and kid you not, 8000 pieces of paper...

They're in good chronological order, I 'think' I'll continue to store them as they are boxed/lofted and anything else that may come in i'll scan..

I do have oodles of data storage available to me and from looking the other day I think amazon offer me some for being a Prime member.

One thing is clear after reading, I don't think I'll be shredding/burning any of it. PPI's wont come out of the woodwork though, I never signed

up for them at any point right from when I was a wisp of a girl.

don't be so sure on the PPI

I had a neighbour that never signed up for any

then he send a few sar's and found £15k!! by reading his statements with lloyds

Funny you should mention Lloyds, many years ago and in the late 90's I had an current account with Lloyds, I met someone, we got along, I moved to be closer to them

When I did I maxed my account and then had a loan and it went on from there, the amount owed was quite high, then things went wrong and I was forever at the hands of the faceless Lloyds collection department...they were merciless,

in the end I wrote to some head honcho in London, he was a human and we eventually managed to agree a settlement figure on all my accounts, (part of it was bad lending by a lloyds bank manager that overstepped his remit and I was naive enough to accept what he was offering.

I did have payment protection on that account, it was and still is the only account I knowingly had protection on and only then because it was my first account after leaving school...it grew with me....

I'm pretty certain part of my failing on the account(s) was that amount charged on protection, it was quite high, it didn't cover anything because I still maintained a job and at the end of it all I signed and agreement as did lloyds that the settlement figure was full and final...it was approx 5% of the original amount (which in itself was eye watering, even by todays standards....revisiting the PPI on that would not be something I'd want to do, it's almost 20 years since that was put to bed.

PPI's wont come out of the woodwork though, I never signed

.

no need to have 'signed' for it, in alot of cases it was just added

never know, always double check.