Here's How Long You Should Hold Onto Your Credit Card Statements

Whether you receive paper copies of your credit card billing statements or you access them digitally from your online account, you may wonder how long you need to hang on to these financial records. The answer depends on how you use your credit card and what you might need a statement for in the future. Generally speaking, it's advisable to keep personal credit card statements for at least 60 days because that's the time frame in which credit card holders must report errors or fraudulent charges to the card issuer, per the Fair Credit Billing Act.

Ideally, you should review your credit card statement as soon as you receive it to verify if there are any issues that need to be reported, though, as noted, you do have up to 60 days to do so. If you do dispute a credit card charge within that 60-day window, then you should continue to hold on to the statement in question until after the dispute has been settled, which may take as long as two billing cycles following the time you notify the credit card company of the issue.

Of course, getting credit card disputes filed within the allowable time frame isn't the only reason a person might need to hold on to their credit card statements. Other factors that impact how long you should keep credit card statements include:

• Tax-related expenses: If you itemize your taxes and use your credit card to donate to charitable organizations or to pay for other tax-deductible expenses, it can be helpful hang on to credit card statements documenting such expenses as part of your income tax records, which the you should keep between three and seven years, depending on your situation, per the IRS.
• Credit card benefits: If you have a credit card that offers insurance benefits, such as extended warranties on certain types of items or other purchase protection plans, it's a good idea to keep the statements backing up protected items for as long as the guarantee is in place. The length would vary based on the specific benefit provided by your credit card issuer.
• Budgeting purposes: Credit card statements can also be helpful for budgeting purposes. If you build a new budget each year that takes into account your purchases over the last year, using credit card statements may be easier than keeping up with individual receipts. If that's the case, then it would make sense for you to save a year's worth of statements so you don't have to log in and print out a big batch once budgeting time rolls around.

If you don't use your credit card to make tax-deductible purchases or for household budgeting and your account doesn't include purchase-protection benefits, then it's probably fine to limit the amount of time you keep your credit card statements to 60 days unless there's an ongoing dispute. However, if you find yourself often needing to log in to your credit card account to pull up statements older than that, you may just want to get into the habit of keeping them a bit longer. 

The key is to find a balance between making sure you have easy access to the information you may need from these credit card statements without cluttering up space with unnecessary paper or taking up valuable storage space on your computer. When you do decide to get rid of credit card statements, take care to dispose of the statements properly and securely, so that data doesn't fall into the wrong hands.