Going Paperless?
October 30th, 2007 by Grant in: BankingI’m slowly buying in to the paperless world. I’ve converted several of my various accounts and utilities to electronic statements.
I’ve been slow to adapt to this concept, as I’ve always been a fan of paper records. I’ve got all my statements sorted out by year going back to who knows when, even for accounts that have long been closed.
However, over the past month or so, I’ve noticed that I really don’t even look at them any more. For my bank accounts, I generally review my ledger online if not every day, then every other day. If there’s a discrepancy, I know about it when it happens, and not when the next statement shows up.
So while the statements stack up, waiting to be filed away in folders that I’ll probably never go through again, I’m no longer automatically deleting the email requests for customers to convert their paper statements to electron statements.
The Upside
The upside to this is that it will free up room for other things in the house. I can file the existing paper statements away in an a file cabinet, and move my “To Be Filed” tray to a more conspicuous location.
The Downside
The downside to this move is that everything will be electronic. So now I have to think about encryption and security, and how to preserve the data for the minimum amount of time. I’ve got to figure out a way to deal with a hard drive crash, which means the data will periodically have to be backed up on a DVD, then where do you safely store the DVD?
There are a whole host of questions that have to be answered.
My biggest gripe with converting to electronic statements is that you have to log in to the various accounts and download the statements each month. They send you a friendly email indicating the statement is ready, but if you really want it, you’ll have to dig up your password to our site, log in and download the statement.
I would much prefer if they just emailed you the PDF copy of the statement each and every month.
Right click, save, and you’re done…
Has anyone else gone paperless?
Tags: bank statements | bills | electronic filing | paperless | statements | utility bills
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October 30th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
I posted about my attempt at going paperless while back:
Sure wish I could get posting again. Maybe soon.
I also have an encrypted disk ‘image’ that I store all of my financial docs in. Right now it is only about 50MB so it can fit on a thumb drive which resides in the safe. Any time I need to save something I just mount the image (stored locally) and save it in an appropriate directory. then I back it up periodically to the thumb drive.
October 30th, 2007 at 3:23 pm
We have, but with a twist on what you describe, and it’s FANTASTIC.
We still get the paper copies and in fact always decline to go “electronic”. Instead, when the paper versions come in, we use a multifunction machine at home that scans straight to TIF or PDF. Then we move the file to a shared folder under the format of 2007\Name. Anything/everything goes in this — bills, statements, paystubs, disclosures/terms, etc. Finding things is so easy and if you are techie enough you can connect from anywhere to access it.
It’s also awesome for things like applying for a mortgage — you just bundle up the relevant files into a password protected ZIP file.
Backup is an issue — we have a couple PCs in the house so every night the main live copy just copies to another PC. Every few months I make a DVD and keep it offsite. So we actually have better protection than a single paper copy would offer.
October 30th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
I converted quite a lot of statements to paperless. And like you, I wish there is a simpler way to save the PDF files. Having to logon, click to the correct page, download and then name the file correctly in the right folder is really troublesome.
November 11th, 2007 at 5:59 pm
Email is not secure, so it’s far preferable for me to have to log in using secure http and download the statement.
I’ve gone paperless for all my bill statements (credit cards, electricity, phone etc) which I don’t need to hang on to forever.