Freedom Filer

Jan

24th

2008

I’m a big fan of products that make your life easier. I also don’t mind spending money on these types of things, as time is the most valuable asset you have…you can’t buy more of it, and you don’t know exactly how much you have left. So, anything that will save me time I’m going to look at….

When it comes to my process for paying bills, I have a small desk organizer that I arrange my bills in…one slot for short term, and one slot for long term. I typically go through all of the short term bills twice a month, and the long term stuff once a month…basically comparing them to my Quicken scheduled transactions to make sure I don’t miss a payment.

But, after I pay the bill, it goes in a stack “to be filed”. This stack is usually much larger than my “to be paid” stack because I HATE FILING. And, I’m the type of person who errs on the side of caution and keeps a lot of stuff. Usually once a year I’ll go through and purge my files of old utility bills, paychecks, credit card statements, etc. But, that’s usually done over the Christmas break (in preparation for the new year), but who wants to waste their vacation time filing???

In comes the Freedom Filer….it claims to be a self-purging filing system. Various folders are created for:

Documents you’d never throw away (birth certificates, wills, trusts, etc)
Documents you’d replace once a year (insurance policies, etc)
Tax folders for current year
Tax folders for the past 10 years
Monthly folders from last year
Monthly folders from this yea

The folders are color coded according to their function, so it makes it easy to distinguish.

The price tag is a little steep at $43 for a bunch of preprinted labels. You have to provide the hanging folders, unless you’re going to lay out $150 for a pre-built set including the crate to hold the folders. But, is it worth it? I think so.

I should mention that I first read about the Freedom Filer on Unclutterer.com. They have a full review here.

Comments

One Response to “Freedom Filer”

Camera Inflation : Random Thoughts of an Engineer on January 26th, 2008 11:23 pm

[…] while implementing my Freedom Filer system today, I ran across a receipt from 1998 where I bought my FIRST digital camera. It was/is a […]

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