After walking in last night to find yet another stack of my roommate's mail sitting on the counter, I started to wonder why he got so much more mail than I did.
Sure, most of it was junk, but I think I saw (without being nosey - come on, now) a few bills sprinkled in there as well. Then I remembered I had been paperless for a couple of years now, and how much that had reduced the "crap" mail that I had been receiving for years.
It got me thinking, 'Why doesn't he just go paperless?' Then I thought a little further ... 'Why don't we ALL go paperless?!'
OK, I'm not going to get on my soapbox and preach about saving the environment by receiving paperless balances. You know and I know that saving paper helps the environment in more ways than one.
But really, one of the most annoying things about paper statements is the clutter and the fact that the paper statement is usually outdated. If you're already making your payments online and tracking your spending online, then what's the use of getting a paper bill in the mail? And yet as of 2011 (granted, a while ago), just 25% of consumers received online statements exclusively on their credit card, according to Javelin Strategy & Research.
While some point to the risks of online banking and identity theft as a reason to stay with paper, the fact of the matter is that your credit card information is on that company's web server already. And unless you're shredding your garbage, there's risk involved in throwing away (or hopefully recycling) that old credit card statement, too. (Not to mention an ID theft getting to your statement before you do, via your mailbox.)
Meanwhile, Discover claims on their website that it saves "over 70 million pages per year" with paperless statements - that's a lot of trees! And did we mention that the Federal Government is putting a halt to paper checks starting in March, a savings that they project will save the government upwards of $130 million dollars per year? Seriously, going paperless was such a no-brainer of an idea that the Federal Government agreed to it, which in 2013 is really saying something.
Not a good time to be a Dunder Mifflin employee right now, huh? (Or for that matter a cast member on The Office. But that's neither here nor there, I suppose.)
Anyways, if you're already doing most of your banking online, why bother with the paper? You'll save some trees, avoid recycle bin clutter AND you might even get rewarded by your credit card issuer for your decision. That's a win/win/win if you ask us. (And Michael Scott, too.)
