…throw away your old bank statements.
i confess; in a rubbermaid container, beneath a layer of dust and stored under the bed – between the dried remains of the first corsage i ever received and my mickey mouse ears from disneyland - there are a few sappy love letters from boys from back in my high school days. i confess this because they are the only ones i felt worthy of keeping. why? they were probably the most sincere. those that i received later in life, in the grown up years… well, those are gone. folded, spindled, mutilated, maimed, damaged, bowdlerized, butchered, crushed, cut to pieces, defaced, disable, expurgated, mangled, ravaged and burned.
(i had some pain in the past – it doesn’t show, does it?)
the ones from the school years, though, the last time i read them – sometime in the last decade – they still made me smile. feel a little warm and fuzzy. shoot, had i had a glass of wine and some eighties love songs playing, probably would have cost me a fortune in long distance calls. good thing for me, and my bf, that i didn’t, eh?
oh, now… *his* love letters… well, those are keepers. but i digress… keep your old love letters, the ones that matter to you, because even when you are at your happiest in life, should you need a little pick-me-up, they’re good for that. to remember how special you really must be to have inspired such words from others.
bank statements, on the other hand, those can just go. why? think about it. those times in your life when you had no money, but now you do? nothing but bad thoughts there, amiright? and just the opposite… don’t have a lot of money now, but maybe you used to? doesn’t make the old heart warm, now, does it? or maybe you’ve been fortunate enough to have had a steady income for the past decade, and well, good for you. but when you’re looking back and seeing the $850 you spent on the water pump for your car or the $4500 for your kids braces (and then he never wore the retainer!) or the $1200 for the tickets to hawaii that you never got to use because your grandma passed away and you had to go to the funeral or, or, you see where i’m going with this, right? and trust me – worst case scenario, you get audited and the irs wants them? the bank can get them for you. that’s what they get all those ridiculous fees for. customer service.
now, for one that hit home just this morning (when we got up at 6 to go for the first bike ride in a month)…
Stretch.
keep your old love letters