Daily Dose of Thrifty: Go Paperless With Your Statements

Photo Credit: www.extraordinarypeople.co.uk

Have you thought about going paperless with your bills and statements?  It is not just being a good steward of the environment, but it could actually help your budget and sanity too! By going paperless, it just simply means that you will start receiving your statements electronically via email.

A while ago we shared with you a tip on using bill pay to help reduce cost and be more thrifty.  On this post we want to stress cutting the paper coming to you – encouraging thrifty, frugal habits by switching to paperless statements.  Not only is there potential for thriftiness, like most tips, the convenience of a paperless-society (we heard about that so often decades ago!) can provide a huge value to you.

Check out these following benefits for getting switching to paperless statements.

• Avoid fees for paper statements – This is the first reason that comes to mind on why this suggestion is so thrifty.  Depending on your biller, you could be paying a fee to have your statement delivered via to your mailbox.  Switching to paperless just might save you a few dollars a month which over time really adds up.
• Reduce your opportunity of mail fraud and identity theft – According to Javelin Strategies, an expert in identity theft issues, this crime grew 20% from 2008 to 2009 affecting 11 million Americans.  If we saw this same trend this year, that would mean about 1 in 20 people would suffer from identity theft.  One way (out of many, arguably) in which identity theft is committed is via mail fraud.  Cut down on the amount of mail with your personal information and you’ve cut down your chances of suffering the consequences of someone gaining that information and stealing your identity.
• Better organization – Reduce your amount of clutter that you receive and the “piles of bills” that stack up. They might still be there, but at least you will feel better that they are not taking over your desk!
• Many businesses keep your statement for years – This usually tends to be a strong reason for wanting to keep your paper statements, but many companies keep them for you to refer to online for many years and you can print in the case if you need to. Check with your biller to find out how long they keep the information.
• Save a copy of your statement on the computer – If you wanted to keep a copy yourself for an unlimited amount of time (especially in the case where a biller might not keep them as long), just save the document yourself in a bills folder on your computer.  This also aids in being more organized – you never have to wonder where that bill went……
• Set up your bills in bill pay – By doing this, you can be even more organized and to save money on postage (like we have mentioned before).
• Be a good steward of our resources – Like we have mentioned before, we as The Thrifty Couple believe we should be good stewards of this amazing creation. Just viewing your bills online will help decrease the amount of paper we all use.
• Get less bills in your mailbox and more FREEBIES – We love to open our mailbox and find a big pile of FREEBIES instead of bills. It always makes you feel better.

How Can You Sign-Up:

• Many of your billers/banks also want you to go paperless for many of the same reasons above and for their budgets too – reduce paper and ink cost, reduce mailing costs, etc. so many will make it very easy to sign-up! By heading to your biller’s website, you will most likely easily find the form to go paperless.
• Check your next paper statement, it may include a portion on the bill to fill-out to go paperless next time and for the future.  When you send your bill back with payment, they will see that you have filled this out and get your enrolled.
• Call them over the phone and sign-up. Many companies will be able to sign you up with just a simple phone call.