Which records should I keep for myself?

Six pages in this library are about a record you will want later and do not have yet. The print button is a PDF editor is the confirmation page with the reference number on it. Get the voicemail out of the phone is the message you have decided to keep. Write down every address you have lived at is the form that wants ten years of moves and jobs. Read the ticket before you pay it is the envelope you could make disappear by mail tonight. Keep your child’s letters somewhere that lasts until 18 is the letter you write now for someone to open years from now. Leave a list your family can find is the list for whoever has to sort out your accounts and papers one day. Each is about keeping something for later, and each carries a line about what not to keep, or where not to send it.

Change the destination from your printer to Save as PDF. The print button is a PDF editor says people meet the print dialogue as the thing that appears before paper comes out, and it is also, on every computer made this decade, a small free document tool that no one ever introduced you to. Four things it does, in rough order of how often you will want them. Keep the thing before it disappears: booking confirmations, order pages, appointment details, the page with the reference number on it, printed to a PDF, are yours permanently in a file rather than an email that will be somewhere in a pile in two years on a website that will have been redesigned; the page calls this the version worth building a habit around, four seconds at a moment when you are already looking at the page. Strip an article down to the article, because the print preview does much of what a reader mode does. Take pages out of a document: open the PDF in a browser, set a page range in the print dialogue, and save the result, which is the thing people install software for; on a Mac the viewer already on the machine will merge, split, rotate and reorder pages from its thumbnail sidebar. The fourth is the part the people who do this professionally were firmest about: when you use an online converter, the free sites that merge, split or convert a PDF in your browser, you are uploading the document to somebody else’s computer, which for a train timetable is fine and for an employment contract, a medical letter, a tenancy agreement, anything covered by a confidentiality agreement at work, or anything with your bank details in it is a decision rather than a convenience. The methods on the page all run on your own machine, and the page says that is most of why they are worth learning. One way it quietly fails: some print-to-PDF paths produce a picture of the text rather than the text, so check by opening the result and trying to select a word. And the page adds that the security on a PDF is not much of a security; if a file matters that much, the protection is not sending it.

A voicemail is usually stored by the phone company, not inside your phone. Get the voicemail out of the phone says the save button is not saying what you think it is: on most phones a voicemail sits on the phone company’s system and your phone is only playing it to you from there, which is why people lose them without doing anything wrong, when the number is given up, the account closes, the carrier changes, or the old phone goes in for the upgrade. Getting the copy out is usually small: open the message and look for a share or forward option, which on most phones sends the recording as an ordinary audio file you can email to yourself; for an old phone that predates all of that, one person’s route was a cable from the headphone socket to a computer’s microphone input; if even that fails, ask the phone company, because some can send a saved message as a file on request. Then make a second copy in a different place, because one copy is one accident and this is a file you do not get to download again. The page says plainly that you do not have to listen to it to save it: saving and listening are separate acts, and only the first one is urgent. For someone still here, the people who lost someone’s recorded words have one consistent instruction: get a recording while it costs nothing, call and let it go to voicemail, or better, tell them you want a recording of them and record on purpose, because laws about recording a live call without consent differ by country and by state, and a message someone leaves you is different in kind. Some people described the same discovery, that the sound of how someone speaks fades from memory sooner than a face does. Whether keeping a dead person’s recorded message helps or hurts is split on that page, and its note carries one practical asymmetry: a saved message can always be deleted later and a deleted one usually cannot be brought back, so if you are undecided, saving keeps both choices open and you never have to press play.

Write down every address, with dates, and keep the identity numbers out of the file. Write down every address you have lived at says many people keep a written record of every place they have lived with the month and year they moved in and out, because that is what background checks and financial applications ask for and it is exactly what slips the memory; some people say a five- or ten-year history defeated them. Many people keep the employers alongside, exact dates, the company’s address and contact details, and some write a short paragraph under each role so the list doubles as the master copy every future résumé is cut from. The rule that makes it work, from some people: update it whenever you move or change jobs. If you never kept one, the rebuild is a one-time job from the places that kept it for you: many people found their whole history in the saved shipping addresses of an online shopping account, some in the free credit report, which the page checked is available in the US, some in old utility bills, and some in old leases, expired driving licences, a phone’s location timeline and old tax forms; many people warn that none of those is permanent, so pull the dates out and keep the list. Who asks for this is argued both ways, invasive against standard, and what decides it, people say, is whether the role needs a clearance or a badge; the strictest case is the US federal clearance questionnaire, ten years with a person who knew you at each address, and one person says the whole habit is mostly an American one. Then the page’s loudest caution: a single document holding addresses, employers, dates and, worst, identity numbers or scanned documents is an identity-theft kit if it leaks, and some people say automated scanners look for exactly that file. Some people want it in an encrypted app with a second factor, some want it on paper in a drawer, and the page’s own position is to keep the list itself wherever you will actually maintain it and keep identity numbers, licence scans and account details out of it entirely. One caution the page turns into a refusal: one person suggested inventing a plausible address where the paperwork is lost, and a caution answers that incorrect information removes you from consideration and histories that disagree can stop a check passing; write ‘unknown, roughly that spring’ instead, which the page marks as its own line.

Read every field on the ticket before you pay it. Read the ticket before you pay it says some people say the same thing about a parking ticket: check the plate number against your own car before you pay, because people move their own tickets onto other cars, and some people say they have seen it done. One person says check the street name, the date and the description of the car as well, because some people say reversed digits and wrong states are ordinary; the page says the reading is not a defence but the check that the ticket is yours and correct before any money moves. Some people say the long cost of a ticket is the insurance premium, which can outweigh the fine, and that whatever you do should be aimed at keeping the violation off your record; one person says a plea to reckless driving raised their premiums for years, and the page warns: do not plead to it if the long-term cost matters to you. Some people say a first-time offender with a clean record who appears in person, not by mail, often comes away with a reduced fine, a dismissal, or a plea to something not reported to insurers, and some say the court can cost you more than the fine once fees and a day’s wages are added; what decides it, people say, is your driving history, the fine against your wages, and what the particular court is known to offer, which its own website or clerk will tell you before the day. The page carries what two jurisdictions publish: California’s court self-help pages list paying, traffic school, fixing a fix-it ticket, a trial including one by written declaration, and, for anyone who cannot pay, more time, a lower amount, a payment plan or community service; the United Kingdom’s page says the minimum for speeding is a £100 fine and three points, that a speed awareness course may be offered instead if you have not been on one in three years, and that twelve points in three years means disqualification. The radar question, when was the gun last calibrated, is the tactic people there began with, and some people take it apart: technicians calibrate the equipment, judges have convicted with the gun admitted uncalibrated, many courts take an officer’s visual estimate as expert evidence, and in at least one state the paperwork is in the officer’s hand before you ask. A private car-park notice is a different creature with different law, and the plate check applies to those most of all.

Keep the main copy of your child’s letters on paper or on a drive you own, and treat any email account as the extra copy. Keep your child’s letters somewhere that lasts until 18 starts from one plan: open an email address for a new baby, send it letters, photos and videos for years, and hand over the login on the eighteenth birthday. It has one weak point, which is that the address can disappear before the child ever sees it. Many people warn that free email providers delete accounts nobody signs in to, and the providers’ own help pages say so. One says it may delete an inactive account and its data if you are inactive across its services for at least two years. Another says a mailbox you have not accessed for 12 months becomes inactive, and that its emails, folders and contacts are then permanently deleted and cannot be restored; signing in again brings back the mailbox, not what was in it. Both talk about you using the account, so letters arriving in the inbox may not count as use, and the rules change, so read the wording of any provider you pick. One person lost their daughter’s account after 14 months without a sign-in, even though it was linked to their own, and warns that a deleted account may be impossible to recover. Another says emails they had scheduled to send at a later date disappeared, so a delayed send is not a safe way to carry a letter into the future.

Many people prefer paper letters, albums and diaries, or storage that is not email, such as a drive or cloud space, because it lasts and feels more personal. For digital copies, one person suggests saving to external hard drives or to more than one cloud service, because hosts can clear out old data. People who have thought about where the letters should live split: one side says an email account is the best place because you can search it and share it, and the other says paper and local copies do not depend on a company’s rules, its servers staying up, or a login, so they last. The point the providers’ own help pages settle is that a free account can be deleted, which is why the main copy belongs where no company can delete it. If you do keep an address, one person warns that the password has to be stored somewhere safe, or the child may never be able to open the account, and some people say you have to sign in periodically; the page suggests a date on a calendar six months from now and every six months after that. One person suggests putting the login in a will so it passes to the child on your death or at a time you set; a will can become public in some places, so ask a lawyer before writing a password in one. A box of paper letters needs no login, but someone still has to know that it exists. The page does not cover the legal side of leaving someone access to an account, what each provider allows, the rules on opening an account for a child where you live, or technical steps for backing up a mailbox. If you would rather not create anything online in your child’s name, the paper route is the whole plan. The date to watch is not the eighteenth birthday; it is the first year nobody signs in.

Write one list of your accounts and where your important papers are, and tell one person where it is, even if you own very little. Leave a list your family can find is the one kept for someone else to open: some day a person in grief will have to close your accounts, find your papers and decide where to begin. Some people say that when nothing is written down, the family spends months on detective work through mail and records, often while grieving. One person argues that planning only matters if you have assets. Some people answer that the tasks do not depend on money: someone has to close the accounts, cancel the services and deal with the body and the paperwork, whatever the estate is worth, and a list saves hours of digging through mail. Some people say the basic steps, a list of accounts, a named person and a note of your wishes, cost nothing. The page’s own first sheet has three things on it: the name of each place where you have an account or a bill, where your important papers are kept, and who you would want to sort things out. In the US, the Federal Trade Commission says a dead person’s debts are paid from the estate, and that family members usually do not have to pay them from their own money; an exception is a loan you co-signed with them, and in some states a surviving spouse can be responsible for certain debts, so ask a lawyer or a legal aid service about your own case. Many people say to keep the important papers in one clearly labelled place, such as a binder, a safe or a file cabinet, and one person suggests pulling a recent credit report to find accounts you may have forgotten, such as a store card that carries a balance. One person says funeral preferences, such as burial or cremation, need writing down, since they slip away in the stress of grief.

Do not write passwords on that sheet; how to hand them over is a separate choice. People disagree, and the page does not tell you which is right for you. Many people say to give a spouse or next of kin a way into your digital life, because being locked out causes delays and stress in grief. The two main ways are set out side by side on the page: a paper copy in a secure but easy-to-reach place, such as a fireproof safe or a particular drawer, with the people you trust told where it is; or a password manager that lets a named person ask for access after a waiting period, which is easier to keep up to date and means nobody has to go and find a paper. What decides it, they say, is how comfortable you are with technology, how many accounts you have, and whether you trust a company’s storage more than a physical copy. One person suggests giving account names or numbers but not logins, so the survivor goes through each company’s own recovery process; one person says to make sure the survivor can reach your main email account, which lets them reset the others; one person prefers to keep some accounts private even from a spouse. Some people warn that a written list is a target if it is stolen and goes out of date whenever you change a password, and one person warns that a password manager fails too if the master password or recovery key is lost. One person, a probate court worker, warns that logging into a dead person’s accounts without the right legal standing is legally risky, and that the probate process exists for this. The page names a problem it cannot solve: recovery keys for cryptocurrency are critical and easily forgotten, and it does not describe a safe way to pass one on.

The page goes on to the legal papers, and one rule there is worth carrying. It covers a will, beneficiary forms, a power of attorney and a medical directive, with the rules for the US and for England and Wales; Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own, and what banks accept differs by state in the US. About brokerage accounts, FINRA, the US regulator, says that a transfer-on-death designation controls who inherits and supersedes a will or trust, and that you keep control of the account while you are alive. Its example is a will that divides assets between two children while the designation names only one: that child receives all of it, so the will and the forms should agree. A lawyer or a free legal-aid service is where to ask about a will or a power of attorney for your situation.

This list is not for a death that has just happened: the FTC says the person named in the will as executor, or an administrator a court appoints if there is no will, is the one who settles the estate. If you have a business, foreign assets or a large estate, you need a lawyer; it is the first sheet of paper, not the plan. If there is no one you trust to hold the list, or you cannot share this with the person you live with, the page does not cover what to do, and it does not cover long-term care costs either. Outside the US and the UK, the rules differ.

Who these pages are not for. The print page is not a workaround for a site asking you to pay for what you are reading, because somebody wrote the thing, and it says a proper reader is the better tool past a few hundred pages. The voicemail page is not for everyone, and the people it is not for are not grieving wrongly: some found a recording kept the wound open, and for them the page says a written record, texts, emails, a card in their handwriting, may be the kinder object, holding the person without playing them aloud. The addresses page says readers outside the US and Canada should look at their own forms before keeping anything, and that for a gap that cannot be documented, a stretch of homelessness, a sofa, an employer that no longer exists, people there had no answer beyond one person who says clearance investigators are used to human lives if you can say where you were. The ticket page says that if the ticket is for causing serious harm or a death, none of it applies and a lawyer does, that it does not carry a script for the roadside moment with an officer, and that outside California and the United Kingdom the two pages it could read are not yours.