Business Owners - Shred All Papers!

As you have all heard to a sickening degree that I have recently moved and with that comes cleaning out old files. The IRS suggests keeping your tax records for 7 years and I think I had 10 years accumulation. Since I have been self employed most of my adult life, that's a lot of paper shredding. It was soul cleansing to do so. Remember where I was working, who I was working for and how I felt and who I was at that time was a trip down memory lane with most of them good. But what I was interested to find was old credit card slips that I had saved. I owned a hair salon and had kept those receipts. Well back in the days when ID theft wasn't such a huge concern, I noticed most of the these slips had the cards full number printed with the name of the client and their signature. Be certain that I was careful to shred each and every one of these but the thought entered my head of who had my information and were they being as careful. Business owners, if you haven't cleaned out those file, now might be the time. Take care not to only dispose of them but to carefully shred them so there is no potential of an ID thief to take advantage of what you discard. Do it for your faithful clients and protect their safety. It was scary for me to find this so intact after all this time and I wanted to bring it to the attention of business owners everywhere. Fall cleaning is a great time to start!