Personal Document Shredding: What Needs to Be Shredded & When

Developing a document retention schedule is crucial to staying compliant with security best-practices and laws and regulations. By using a professional document shredding service such as R4 Services, you can rest assured knowing that state-of-the-art machinery will destroy every bit of information, converting mountains of paperwork into tiny bits of paper, while keeping you safe from liabilities. By thoroughly shredding outdated documents containing financial information, personal info (such as your SSN), any sort of account info, etc. you’re protecting yourself and your business from identity theft, legal liabilities and other avoidable headaches. Even some documents, that you don’t think should be shredded, should be! This includes junk mail and receipts.

There are many types of documents that all have extremely sensitive information on them that need to be periodically destroyed. But on the other hand, there are some documents that you should keep forever for legal reasons. This all sounds fine and dandy, but when you get right down to it, how do you know: should it stay or should it go?

What Needs to be Shredded

There are some documents that solely exist to provide personal info, but they can be disposed of after a certain length of time. These documents include:
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• Boarding passes (immediately)
• Resumes/hiring documents (if no longer needed)
• Shipping labels (immediately)
• Bank statements (after 1 year)
• Pay stubs (after 1 year)
• Bills (after 1 year)
• Undisputed, paid medical bills (after 1 year)
• Sales receipts (immediately)
• Paid utility bills and credit statements (immediately)
• Expired warranties (immediately)
• Tax receipts (after 7 years)
• W-2s (after 7 years)​

Documents to Keep

On the other hand, some documents, both personal and business, should be kept forever. Lock them up in a safe place so you can refer to them if you ever need to. These are documents with a lot of personal identity info that will stay relevant as long as you live.
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• Tax documents
• Birth and death certificates
• Pension plans
• Business licenses
• Property deeds (as long as you own it)
• Mortgage documents
• Social security cards/info
• Vehicle titles (as long as you own it)
• Loan documents
• Insurance policies
• IDs and passports
• Wills, living wills, power of attorney documents
• Marriage and divorce paperwork

Whether your business needs documents stored or shredded, R4 Services will provide you with unparalleled, discreet and confidential services for all of your document needs. Our state-of-the-art document and hard drive shredders allow us to destroy a wide variety of data mediums and our 24-hour secure vault services will keep your most sensitive information in-tact and available the next time you need it.