Completely Paperless?

We do a lot of scanning for tax purposes. I keep our actual documents that support tax filings for 7 years, but we don't really have a lot - both our w-2, some stock statements, student loan statements, child care. . . pretty much it.

I pay all my bills online, so now I don't even get those in the mail, have our house and cars on auto pay - again - no mailed statements. We also have very few 'bills' other than mentioned above. I think that helps a ton not to have outstanding credit card statements, etc.

not sure if this could work for you, but it is what we do to help cut back on the paper clutter.

At my home, everything is paperless, here, not so much. My boss is apparently addicted to it.

You should always have proof, you make a payment that posts both to your bank and who you paid. I can't think of a thing that doesn't double post at two different locations, two different servers. If everything goes down at the same time you will have bigger issues than a missed payment.

We also back up our computer daily. Again the chances of both crashing, heck I have a better chance of winning the lottery!

I keep ALL printed documents and file them. I don't believe in going paperless because there can be too many errors made by computer. I stick to the school of thought that you should keep all records for at least 7 years!
While I was teaching (I recently retired) I kept both computer grades AND grades in a traditional gradebook. It was more work, but I didn't want to sacrifice any safety measures considering important student documents!

At work I'm completely paperless. At home, the only documents I keep are the hard copies of tax documents (tax returns, W2s/1099s and any other docs to support the returns). Truth be told, if I scan those I don't always keep the hard copies either. I do scan to a server that is backed up daily, so I'm not concerned with losing everything. I also do everything digitally--calendar, task lists, contacts, etc. It's easier, I have everything in a place where it can be viewed wherever I am, and I'm much less likely to lose everything this way (once you lose a paper copy of something, game over; if you lose a digital copy, there are generally several methods of recovery). I also LOVE the lack of clutter.

When I started with my current job I told everyone we were going paperless. Eighteen months later the quality reviewers want hard copy files on everything. It's like stepping back into the pre-computer age.

I am old school and I don't trust paperless. My boss keeps his calendar only on the computer. I can't imagine how I would reconstruct his calendar if something happened to the one on the computer! For a long time I kept both paper and computer but eventually dropped the paper, but it still worries me!