| I'm a saver ... of little bits of paper with messages and
to-do lists, the odd piece of junk mail, pay stubs and other important papers. The problem
is I don't have an organized filing system. Mostly they go into big piles of paper that
get moved about the house randomly. That means the scattered archives of my life might
turn up anywhere. But I have them. Roxie Ferguson, on
the other hand, may be a little too neat for her own good. A few years ago, she cleaned
out her deceased husband's things and tossed out his old papers and tax records. Her drive
for cleanliness has come back to haunt her as she tries to get contributions he made to a
401(k) plan released from one of his former employers.
"I needed a check stub" or account statement, she
said. Anything to prove his participation in the plan. She didn't have it.
The moral: "Don't throw away records, and always let
your pension know where you are," said John Hotz, deputy director of the Pension
Rights Center in Washington, D.C.
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