Okay,

I have searched the web with little info my way about what to and not keep. I am hoping to run across someone who is on the "new school" side of things when it comes to document managment. I am at the point where I don't want to hang on to my W-2 forms or my pay stubs, as well as my old Filing forms. I e-filed for the first time this year and it feels great!!!!! Not one form had to be submited!, Now my questions is, Is it safe to scan all my past stuff in as a PDF file and shred the originals? I mean if I scan it in, it is just as good as the original if it comes out clear and readible even in color! I have been thinking about doing this with other docs too! Student Loan papers, Car loan papers, Investing Records, etc... I am siked about doing this. I also work for a Savin reseller and have seen what the scanners can do. It would be free for me to do this. All I would have to do is stay after work for a few and scan my stuff in. I just don't know if this is a good idea. I can always play dumb if someone ever needed these records and act like I thought it was perfectly fine. I'm sure they would just slap my wrist and say don't do it again and save the original. I also would have a great backup solution in place so I would never lose anything (I am a I.T. guy). What do you guys think on this? Please let me know

IMO it is safe to scan all that stuff into PDF's and then store the hard copies in a very safe place. You will have to decide whether to save all or just part of the hard copies. After seven years you can chuck many of the documents.

You should scan and OCR the documents. Then, you can print out "originals" anytime.

You're assuming OCR works. It doesn't. It sucks, actually...

I've had VERY successful OCR with Omnipage 15 Pro. It's impressive.

Somewhat time-consuming, but not as much as before.