Gone Paperless

Save some trees and go paperless. Another way to be green!

Today, I went paperless with my credit card statements. My bank statement, car payment, and cell phone bills have already been on a paperless system for over a year. I have not had any problems with this, I check my balances online when I need to and I can access my statements anytime I want to. So, I thought it was time to go paperless with the rest of my personal finance world.

I was a little paranoid and cautious about making this move, but I have never had a reason where I needed my paper statements and if I ever had I was always able to access the paperless ones online.

Advantages to going paperless:
1. Good for the environment, you save trees!
2. You can access and print your statements anytime.
3. You can access past statements, most up to 12-24 months of history and some with up to 7 years worth of statement history (which is all you would need for tax purposes).
4. Less office and file cabinet clutter.
5. No more wasted time shredding old statements.
6. You receive your statements as soon as they are available rather than waiting for them in the mail.

The only thing I would print a statement out for is for proof of charitable donations. Those are tax related items and I think I would still want to keep paper copies of that with the rest of my tax related documents.

While going paperless can be great, I realize there may be some downfalls to consider. There is the possibility that I might neglect my accounts. I thought about myself about whether this would be an issue for me: I came to the conclusion that since I check my email daily and you get an email whenever a statement is available that this shouldn't be a problem for me. I am pretty anal about things so I think that I will be fine. Whereas someone who does not check their email regularly might have difficulty with a paperless system. I think it will work for me and help to keep me organized. Besides if it doesn’t work out I can always change back.

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