More Tax Records and Bank Statements

Day 212: More Tax Records and Bank Statements

These tax records and bank statements were in a big binder labeled "Pierce Sale and Shadford Purchase." That meant to me that the binder was full of documents about selling our flat in San Francisco and buying our first place in Ann Arbor, over sixteen years ago. I was surprised to find the binder. It was part of barrel scraping, reaching to the back of low shelves that haven't entered my consciousness in years. It seemed like a jackpot. There can be no need for documents about a house we haven't lived in for decades.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I opened it up and found a whole bunch more tax statements, including a handwritten individual 1040 of Rich's from 1995, the year we met, the last year we prepared individual tax statements. The last year that he prepared a tax statement at all.

There were seven years worth of tax statements in the big binder, including all the back-up documents. My father assured me that it is okay to throw away the back-up documentation and retain only the tax returns themselves, except for the previous three years.

He must be right.

He's a tax attorney.

Still, it was scary, putting all those back-up documents in the shredder pile. Bank statements, charitable gift receipts, medical receipts, interest statements and everything else. All in a box, ready for shredding.

Now that I'm 50, and getting age spots and cellulite and wrinkles and just generally getting that thin-skin look, I'm thinking a lot about growing older. In the words of my old neighbor, Barb Blue, the days crawl, the years fly. A cliche perhaps, but the years do fly. Suddenly, I'm more than middle-aged. I completely understand now what I never did before: when Papa (my father-in-law Bill) would tell me, as he often did, that he felt surprised when he looked in the mirror. That he felt just the same on the inside as he did when he was 30 years old.

Looking at that 1040 in Rich's hand, that individual tax statement from the year before we were married, and then that stack of eighteen tax returns, gave me that same feeling of surprised. I'm getting old! I've completed so many tax returns, I'm losing track of them! I've filed our taxes so many times now, it's easy!

Well, these things were easy to get rid of, too. One more day down, 154 to go. I think I saw another binder or two on that same shelf.