Paperless Statements

[Anonymous]

Is it better to receive your statements in the mail or receive paperless statements?

[Anonymous]

i think its personal preference, i prefer to have them online since i check all my accounts daily but others like my grandfater takes paper statements, checks each charge to the receipt ,staples them together and keeps them for 5-7 years. It depends on personal organization preferences

[Brusilov]

Well, from an identity theft standpoint I would think the paperless statements would have a distinct advantage.  First, no one can intercept your delivered mail, mail that is improperly delivered to the wrong location (neighbor, or after moving), and then secondly if you do not shred your paper statements someone could potentially go through your garbage.  From an organization standpoint as well I think it's far easier to look up archived statements online from years past, rather than rummaging through cabinets or files.  But I  guess there's always the possibility of someone hacking the login to your bank account too so I tend to change my passweord religiously (every 2-3 months) and use a secure password generator.

[haulingthescoreup]

I like online statements. I can always print them out if I want to maintain paper files as well (which are wonderful to have when the computer betrays me!)

[Anonymous]

The reason i asked a few weeks ago a neighbor of mines mail was mixed with my mail i thought it was my Shells gas card statement but when i looked at the balance i was like this could not be my statement an to my surprise it was my neighbors statement. This is not the first time i have received mail that was not mine. I need to call to the post office an complain to the post master.

[Red1Blue]

I receive paperless statements on all my accounts. I want to save some trees.

[Anonymous]

There are many reasons why online statments are preferred to paper statements.

1. From an identity theft perspective, if you don't get a paper statment then chances are lower that someone would go through your mailbox and steal your information or getting misdirected or misdelivered to someone else.
2. From a conservationist perspective, you save trees and so that is nice too and chances are less that you will not get your statement or its lost or whatever.
3. From a convenience perspective, you get them quicker, you can review them usually for up to 12 months online, although I strongly recommend you download the PDF files and save them for future reference.

I have any and all of my accounts that offer paperless statments coming to me electronically and keep pushing those that don't offer it to hurry up and do it already. I check my stuff online so regularly that it makes paper statements obsolete.

[MattH]

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@Anonymous wrote:

There are many reasons why online statments are preferred to paper statements.

...From a convenience perspective, you get them quicker, you can review them usually for up to 12 months online, although I strongly recommend you download the PDF files and save them for future reference...

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 One of the incentives some companies offer to encourage switching to paperless is giving customers who've gone paperless access to past statements from many years in the past.

Like you, I archive PDFs (and back them up onto another disk in case of a computer crash).  Do make sure before disposing of your computer to wipe the hard drive, not just delete the files but securely wipe so an expert cannot retrieve the deleted data.

At tax time my archive of PDFs surely came in handy because I could keyword search for things like the names of charities to which I've made donations by credit card.  There's an old programmer's saying "you can't grep dead trees!"  Note to non-geeks: grep is a string-searching utility.

[Anonymous]

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@MattH wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

There are many reasons why online statments are preferred to paper statements.

...From a convenience perspective, you get them quicker, you can review them usually for up to 12 months online, although I strongly recommend you download the PDF files and save them for future reference...

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 One of the incentives some companies offer to encourage switching to paperless is giving customers who've gone paperless access to past statements from many years in the past.

Like you, I archive PDFs (and back them up onto another disk in case of a computer crash).  Do make sure before disposing of your computer to wipe the hard drive, not just delete the files but securely wipe so an expert cannot retrieve the deleted data.

At tax time my archive of PDFs surely came in handy because I could keyword search for things like the names of charities to which I've made donations by credit card.  There's an old programmer's saying "you can't grep dead trees!"  Note to non-geeks: grep is a string-searching utility.

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Excellent additional information, thanks Matt. Yes I keep them organized on a secure NAS and I never discard a hard drive without using military shred on them and then discarding them in a way that they can't be recovered. I guess 15+ years in the business has given me a healthy level of paranoia

[MattH]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@MattH wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

There are many reasons why online statments are preferred to paper statements.

...From a convenience perspective, you get them quicker, you can review them usually for up to 12 months online, although I strongly recommend you download the PDF files and save them for future reference...

---

 One of the incentives some companies offer to encourage switching to paperless is giving customers who've gone paperless access to past statements from many years in the past.

Like you, I archive PDFs (and back them up onto another disk in case of a computer crash).  Do make sure before disposing of your computer to wipe the hard drive, not just delete the files but securely wipe so an expert cannot retrieve the deleted data.

At tax time my archive of PDFs surely came in handy because I could keyword search for things like the names of charities to which I've made donations by credit card.  There's an old programmer's saying "you can't grep dead trees!"  Note to non-geeks: grep is a string-searching utility.

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Excellent additional information, thanks Matt. Yes I keep them organized on a secure NAS and I never discard a hard drive without using military shred on them and then discarding them in a way that they can't be recovered. I guess 15+ years in the business has given me a healthy level of paranoia

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Ah, so you're familiar with the DOD multipass erasing followed by thermite routine...