method/software for filing files of paper in computer

Lifehacker. com is big on this idea, but some of their posts don’t involve starting with a gigantic load of paper.

first thing obviously is reduce the amount of paper. Does it really need to be kept?

Then get access to a good double sided scanner. my office scanner could eat a mountain of file very quickly but you might not want to bring stuff to work.

I bought an Epson wf3xxx duplex scanner printer. people swear by Fuji snapscans but they are expensive.

My advice gets less useful here… I’m on OS X, and  have access to an acrobat pro license, so that is what I’m using to scan. The Epson came with OCR software and there is plenty built into OSX too that helps.

I haven’t decided how I want to organize yet. maybe just file folders and search with the Mac spotlight function. I have Neat Desk software from a past foray, and then there are ever note, paperless by mariner, and devonthink.

I’m leaning towards simpler is better.

I’m going to keep an eye here for suggestions too as I am mid catch up on years worth of stuff.

What aspects of your finances do you graph?

Ok, but remember:  You asked.  Danger… graph nerd.

This is a home built system.  Data input is done using our “books” in gnucash.  It just reads the back end file.  Human readable output is to cacti.  Cacti is a graphing system designed to graph networking stuff… but you can graph anything with it.  You can zoom in/out and see various levels of detail.  It graphs in a sort of “ticker tape” format by default, which is what I use.

I also dump all of this on demand to a text based cgi web page because I found that I am visual and want graphs and the wife is a numbers person and wants numbers.

Everything is automated… data gets updated at least 2x a day with stock/fund pricing and such.

* Asset Summary – bank/stock/mutualfund/misc
* Asset Type Percentage (same as above but as a percentage)
* Assets: Financial vs non-financial
* Assets vs Liability
* Liability by itself
* A summary of “retirement” accounts vs non-retirement accounts
* Asset type percentage (expressed as retirement vs non-retirement vs other)

* Retirement accounts (breakdown of every account on one graph)
* Trading accont (breakdown of every individual stock on on graph)
* trading account cost v value (sum of basis vs worth)
* Mutual fund account (breakdown of several mutual funds on one graph)
* mutual fund cost v value (sum of basis v worth)
* 401k account (breakdown of the individual funds in 401k)
* 401k account cost v value (basis v worth)
* Other funds/stocks/bonds (used to have several things… now just some old savings bonds here)
* Bank/Cash accounts (breakdown of several cash/checking/etc accounts)
* Savings breakdown (we have some liquid savings all categorized and earmarked for different things: pets, gifts, insurance, tools, tires, etc. this is the breakdown)
* Emergency fund (how many months it will last graphed using expense data from 30days, 90 days, 365 days and 5 years)

* ROI comparison (graph with every mutual fund, every stock on one graph and “roi factor” )

For every individual stock and every mutual fund, there are then 3 dedicated graphs: cost v value,  IRR% and ROI factor.

For income/expense I have the following graphs using 4 sets of data: 30day, 90day, 365day and 5 year.  This includes:
* income: active vs passive
* all income vs expenses (nonsalary income, expenses, swr4%, swr3%)
* nonsalary income vs expenses (nonsalary income, expenses, swr4%, swr3%)
* savings percentage
* dividends (breakdown of all dividends per stock/mutual fund)
* tracked expenses (breakdown of some big ticket expense categories)
* Level 1 expenses (this is a “roll up” …  expenses are in categories and subcategories… this is a rollup to the top level category)

* time to retirement (a combined graph of some of the stuff below… how many years to retirement computed using various methods)
* retirement required (a combined graph of some of the stuff below… how much stash is required using various methods)
* nestegg vs target (combined graph of the current financial assets vs 20x expenses and 25x expenses … computed several times with various data sets)
* ERE current ratio (Fisker’s ratio… retirement target is 25x… computed with various data sets)
* Then… for each data set (30 day, 90 day, 365 day and 5 year) there is a separate set of dedicated graphs:
**  Time to retirement
**  estimated retirement percentage
**  estimated retirement (actual assets vs required assets)
**  current withdraw rate (how long would current assets last at current expense rate and 0% return)
**  current withdraw rate 3% (how long would current assets last at current expense rate and  3% return)
**  current withdraw rate 5% (how long would current assets last at current expense rate and  5% return)
**  current withdraw rate 8% (how long would current assets last at current expense rate and  8% return)
**   ERE current ratio

* Firecalc 365 (graph of current 365day data run through firecalc for “retire now”, retire 1 year … , retire in 8 years… expressed as percent success)
* Firecalc 5 year (same as above with 5 year data)
* Firecalc first fit (years to retirement using current expenses/savings for both 1 year and 5 year data)
* Firecalc required portfolio (actual portfolio vs what would be required figured out with firecalc and a little brute force… 1 year data and 5 year data)
* firecalc current inputs (expenses, savings, portfolio value for 1 and 5 years)
* firecalc current outputs (highest/lowest/average portfolio for 1 and 5 years)o* firecalc cache age (hours since last firecalc run)