Paperless billing

This is an absolute no-brainer and I am ashamed that it took this long for me to break out of my old-school ways. I just couldn’t come to grips with the idea that I could stop getting all this paper in the mail and still remember to pay my bills.

This coming from someone who checks his email about 1,200 times a day. In fact my student loan was already set up to send me electronic statements. They even asked me if I needed to keep receiving my paper statements and I said, *gasp*, YES. What is wrong with me?!

So here’s the deal. I finally wrapped my brain around a system that will work for me. I’ll get an email when a statement is issued. I will go to the website, log in, and download the pdf version. I will then log into my bank account online and pay my bill through the bank, online, like I have been doing for two years now.

With this system I will have an organized record–one folder for each company–just like in my file cabinet that is stuffed full of paper statements that I have no idea how long I am supposed to hang onto, except these will not be paper. They will not require an envelope with one of those stupid plastic windows in it, or a return envelope, or all the glossy bill inserts.

I seriously can’t believe it took me this long to come to grips with a new system. I am a really organized person when it comes to my bills, and usually pay them the day I receive them (online bill-pay is a god-send).

And the best part is, it only took about an hour to remember how to log into all my various accounts at various credit card, utility, etc companies and every single one of them had paperless billing as a simple-to-access section, and signup was a breeze on all of them. And as they said at one credit card company…

Congratulations!
You’re going paperless.
(The trees thank you.)