[€uroMeinke]

Much depends on the kinds of records you've been accumulating and how you use them but:

Bills, credit card statements and the like - I generally keep long enough to make sure there wasn't an error and my last payment got credited to the account - that works out to about 3 months for me. Should I find an error, that statement gets pulled out of my "destroy in 3 month folder"

Banks Statements - the same rational applies as above, but I'm a bit more cautious with these as with the advent of electronic bill paying, they seemed to summarize most of my financial transactions quite nicely. I keep the current year, and one year previous (usually purged after I file my taxes) - I also do the same with my mortgage papers as they detail the payments to and from my escrow accounts as well which includes transactions that only happen on an annual basis.

Tax records are a bit tricky - The IRS has three years to approach you for any errors in your taxes (6 years if you under report your earnings by more than 10%). So I generally keep any supporting documents (reciepts, spreadsheets showing mileage or other business deductions, other tax forms) for 3 years. However, the IRS is one place where they consider you guilty without evidence to the contrary - there have been many cases where they have lost a filing and then claim that it was never filed. For that reason, I keep a copy of the final tax filing permanently, but dump all the supporting documentation at the three year mark.