My husband has this thing with getting statements in the mail. Bank, credit card, cell phone, car insurance... you name it, we get a five page statement via the pony express. I have asked on more than one occasion if I can please choose the paperless option and get our statements through email instead. This will reduce the number of trees our little family personally destroys to have things printed on and will vastly help to de-clutter. He says no, he likes to have, in his hands, the actual real paperwork to keep on file.
Fine. That is fine. I am okay with this because, let's be real, he has a greater hand in paying those bills than I do.
Then... it occurred to me...
He never actually looks at them... they never make it to his hands!
I receive them in the mail each month and file them in this little box for him to peruse through at his leisure.

Then, the month comes and goes and I file them in the appropriate folder in our already too stuffed filing cabinet.
And he never looks at them! Once I came to this realization and shared it with Ben he said... "yea good point, we really should just do paperless".
Finally! Freedom! Less clutter! I win!
And now. I am too nervous. I have finally been given the go-ahead and I am nervous that somehow, if we receive these statements only through email we will be some cyber-space creepster's next victims of identity theft. What little we have will be stripped from us while we go about our day as seemingly normal people. Our identity, stolen right out from under us. Not only will our accounts be wiped out, but we will be indebted to some casino in Reno and "own" a Lamborghini we can't pay for. Then when we try to get back on our feet, our social security numbers will be marked as un-hire-able and our reputations will be smeared. We will inevitably be forced to change our identity and move to a country half way around the world never to see our family and friends again.
All because I wanted to de-clutter that ridiculous file cabinet.
What do you think?
4 comments:
GO paperless. As long as your are careful with your password there should be no Identity theft problems plus quite frankly if you never looked at them they you have been paying online ANYway and there is no more or less risk than you have already been doing. good passwords and secure networks are really all you need to be safe with your e-mail and paying online. plus you save trees and declutter. (Oh when you get rid of the plies of old stuff be sure to shred it, even if its only by hand and shred everything even birthday cards so that any important information will be mixed with shreds of not so important information. Or if you have a fire place or charcoal grill just burn it, and then compost the ashes...)
Go paperless.
get gmail and you can save the receipts- as many as you want- in a folder and they never make you delete anything!
G mail is the answer. I am nervous too though, I'm only wireless with my cable.
I've been paperless for years, and it is wonderful. My dad was the one who persuaded me. He pays everything online. Remember you can still print things out, if you need to.
Plus, if your identity is stolen, you can still live at camp and live off donations. We can even give you fake names for the summer staff to learn. Then you can be the mysterious couple from Guam that specializes in the trapeze, if you want to.
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