Electronic Statements

I too have community shredding days. But I can't stand the thought of spending a moment's time on a saturday standing in line with my papers. In any case, I am far more concerned about the loss of my digital photos than I am with the loss of my digital bank statements.

I just don't recall if the attachments are part of the Quicken file or if they are separately viewable once you attach them. I abandoned Quicken in 2007, and wonder what would have happened to all of my attached statements. I also wonder what happens when Intuit decides to screw you and not support attachments any longer unless you upgrade.

DavidScubadiver said:
I just created a folder with subfolders for each account, and am adding my most recent statements for all of my accounts with more than $10 in them. I name the files "Etrade 2010-2" for my February statement, putting the year first because it sorts better when multiple years are saved. I will probably sownload them all over time but that will take a while.

Suggest you use 2 month designators, if you really want the "best" sorting capability... otherwise, you end up with:

2010-1
2010-10
2010-11
2010-12
2010-2
2010-3... etc

HTH!

DavidScubadiver said: Technologist said: DavidScubadiver said:
I just created a folder with subfolders for each account, and am adding my most recent statements for all of my accounts with more than $10 in them. I name the files "Etrade 2010-2" for my February statement, putting the year first because it sorts better when multiple years are saved. I will probably sownload them all over time but that will take a while.

Suggest you use 2 month designators, if you really want the "best" sorting capability... otherwise, you end up with:

2010-1
2010-10
2010-11
2010-12
2010-2
2010-3... etc

HTH!That just does not happen though. My files sort out fine with 2009_1, 2009_2 ... 2009_10. Maybe the - changes it over the _?

If you sort by "Date" or "modifed" (which infers date, some software is smart enough to recognize single digit dates. but if you sort "alphabetically" you may run into the problem I mentioned.

I am a long time computer user, and memories of the use of 99 vs 1999 still make me cringe... so I do the same with months (01, 02, 13...11,12 vs 1, 2, 3...11, 12).

Also, if you ever want to list the filesnames inside a spreadsheet, long dates are a must.

Back on topic. I hate electronic statements for most of the reasons mentioned. But for those that I HAVE to receive electronically, I do similar things (to included folders within email programs).

qcumber98 said: BEEFjerKAY said: Paper statements are also an invaluable fall-back should you die and your personal representative or partner/spouse needs to piece together your estate account-by-account.

Yes. I know we all keep impeccable records and have our impeccable processes. But things happen. Been there.You were clinically deceased? For how long?

No. I was personal representative (executor) for the estate of someone who was. Took months to figure out the what/where of the assets. Still not sure I found everything. Deceased kept meticulous financial records, but was paranoid someone might find them. So finding them was one barrel of fun and deciphering them was the other.

Green for the levity, tho.

DavidScubadiver said: I was sorting alphabetically and had no problems! Anyway, much of the pain in the ass nature of this would be resolved if companies emailed us the statements instead of making us download them ourselves. That way they would already be dated and easy to sort, based on the e-mail headers!

isn't this extremely insecure?

jetsfan92588 said: DavidScubadiver said: Anyway, much of the pain in the ass nature of this would be resolved if companies emailed us the statements instead of making us download them ourselves.
isn't this extremely insecure?
It could be secure. There are several ways to send encrypted emails. I like Enigmail which makes using GnuPG in Thunderbird extremely easy. I would love to be able to login to my account at a bank, upload my gnupg public key, and get statements emailed to me monthly encrypted with that key. The technology to do all that exists, and is really quite usable.

EvilCapitalist said: DavidScubadiver said: I have no idea what you are talking about, or maybe a small idea. Usually if a pdf is created with some sort of restriction on it, you can't re-save it without the restriction, can you? I never heard of a pdf that once opened could be reverted to be unreadable.

Open PDF. Print to office image printer. Open the image in Acrobat. OCR the content. Save PDF

Better yet, use CutePDF writer (windows) - mac osx and linux already have print to pdf enabled. Then you just select CutePDF as the printer and it skips the file size gain from scanning plus the paper and hassle.

Ciidane said: DavidScubadiver said: I use dropbox myself. I will eventually take all of my statements saved on my thumb drive, encrypt them and store them there. I don't like to include unencrypted documents offline because I don't like the idea that someone might access my private information.

One concern I have about dropbox is the ability of it to delete files at will. Although the chances are unlikely, I worry that it may mess up during synchronization and accidentally delete files I don't have any other copies of and leave me SOL. Depending on your OS there are offline synchronization tools such as rsync for linux or DeltaCopy for windows, but then you lose the security of an off-site backup. Using a sync tool on your dropbox directory would solve both problems however.

Dropbox actually uses a versioning file system so you can restore any previous version within the last 30 days as well as any changes in files in the last 30 days(free version). The paid version has a longer retention time. Its incredibly useful if you have more than one computer as it syncs the same directory structure across all computers. If you need a similar product - spider oak does all of the above (is also free for up to 2gb) and dosen't restrict you to a given directory structure like dropbox.

I've been hoping Yodlee would implement a statement grabber and aggregator. They're in a good position to do so, they have the information to do it...but for now they are just doing balances and transactions (and I'm sure other stuff...this is simplified)..

But yodlee probably will get this going finally and I'd love to see that.

For now I save mine to PDFs once about every 2.6 years whenever i think about it...and then it's halfassed and disorganized... in otherwords i dont have myself covered...it's too much damned work.

edit: I keep everything in truecrypt archives so it's not unencrypted wide open..

Lazyman option:
Reminder set for January 15th every year to download all 12 previous year statements for all accounts. All files manually uploaded to bank undelated storage site for easy reference. Copy stored in encryped usb at bank safe deposit box. Possibly unwise to depend on banks to store same year statements but I can only go thru this process once a year.

DavidScubadiver said:

I just created a folder with subfolders for each account, and am adding my most recent statements for all of my accounts with more than $10 in them. I name the files "Etrade 2010-2" for my February statement, putting the year first because it sorts better when multiple years are saved. I will probably sownload them all over time but that will take a while.

I do something similar with a different naming convention...I also throw all the T&C's and disclosures that usually come with a new account, and screenshots of completed bonus requirements/offer pages/etc...Since storage is so cheap and it only takes a couple seconds every month to download all the statements I figure it doesn't hurt to have those kinds of records even if none of your banks closes.

DWooley said: Lazyman option:
Reminder set for January 15th every year to download all 12 previous year statements for all accounts. All files manually uploaded to bank undelated storage site for easy reference. Copy stored in encryped usb at bank safe deposit box. Possibly unwise to depend on banks to store same year statements but I can only go thru this process once a year.

That's what online backups are for.