It never fails. When I pick up my mail, I notice how much of it happens to be junk or worse: credit card and debt consolidation offers, lines of credit applications and shopping catalogs that entice me to spend, spend, spend. My mail can definitely be hazardous to my wallet, with so much of what I receive just aiming to suck my money away from me and thus, my first and only response to the junk mail I do get is to have it be tossed and shredded by my glorious Fellowes Powershred Shredder.
I’ve been offered to receive half a million dollars’ worth of easy money — a lot of them via credit card applications and home equity lines of credit. That, along with the dozens of coupons and equally free catalogs — who knows what percentage of our mail *really* works to separate us from our bucks.
It’s getting so that we no longer need to leave our house to spend ourselves into oblivion and debt hell. I can just imagine how easy it would be to apply to receive all the credit made available to us, and how effortless it would be to subsequently spend it all on the goodies that jump out at us from print media, online sites and even our television sets (or plasmas, as the case may be).
So what’s the best way to avoid getting into a junk mail induced debt mess? I’ve already mentioned that my automatic response is to junk the junk. But if you’d like to be even more merciless about the unwanted, unsolicited mail, then you can do the following things:
Stop Piling On The Debt! Declare War On Junk Mail
#1 Find out how your information gets around.
To have a fighting chance at solving the junk mail problem, you’d want to find the source of the problem. Your information is being bought and sold and resold and it could be tricky to determine where it all originates. A good way to trace your mailing info is by making slight alterations to it each time you pass it along to a new company or entity. For example, by changing your middle initial or name, you may notice how that data gets around.
#2 Tell companies to quit peddling your information.
After identifying who’s behind your unwanted mail, you can write them directly to complain and to request them to drop your name and address from their lists. Inform your credit card companies, credit bureaus and all other business organizations you’ve corresponded with (if possible) that you do not want to release your name, address and phone number for junk mail, promotional or marketing programs.
#3 Use services to help you delist your name from existing mailing lists.
Check out Junkbusters, a free web site which provides great instructions on handling all sorts of junk mail, telemarketing calls, spam and other annoying promotional campaigns. You can also review the material on the New American Dream web site, which has a section called “Declare Your Independence From Junk Mail”.
#4 Refuse to accept the mail at your door.
You can actually write “return to sender” on an untouched envelope, if it’s mail with the label “return postage guaranteed” or “address correction requested”. For mail that includes a reply envelope, use their envelope to return a message insisting that you be removed from their list. Other tactics: mark your junk mail with “refused” and send it back to where it came from. Note that this should not cost you anything because first class postage covers returns.
~ooOoo~
What’s great about cutting down on junk mail is that by doing so, you’re also saving the environment. With less junk mail making the rounds, there’ll be less trash, less need for landfills and dump sites, and ultimately, we’ll all benefit from lower garbage collection bills and taxes. So save yourself from debt while saving the environment at the same time!
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Read about Silicon Valley and Money at http://www.TheDigeratiLife.com
