Do You Delete Old Text Messages or Do You Keep Them Forever?

I was like, okay, well, I guess there's a setting where I can delete messages after a year. And that's a bummer. When you go to text a friend and you see nothing and you're like, oh my God, we haven't talked to you. Do you want to keep Facebook, which does keep everything? He only wants to keep all of the messages from him and his wife until all time. Everything else you can delete after like a day or two.