Every day I go to the mailbox with a small sense of dread. Not for any bill that I am expecting, but the glut of junk I know I will find there. On average, I get one piece of “good” mail every three days, and ten pieces of junk per day. What an amazing waste.
So, I decided, rather than just continue to drop these things in the trash or the recycle bin, I am going to try to get them to stop sending it to me at all.
The first step is going to be the easiest, and also the one with the most affect (I hope). A large percentage of the junk I receive comes in the form of credit card and mortgage loan offers. Last week I finally decided to read through one from top to bottom and see if I could find a number to call to make them stop. Eureka! At the bottom of the page was a section about prescreened credit and loan applications. The Consumer Credit Reporting Companies (Equifax, Experian, Innovis and TransUnion) provide a web page that allows you to opt out of their prescreened credit efforts for five years, or forever.
https://www.optoutprescreen.com/opt_form.cgi
I have chosen to opt out myself and my wife forever. The request forms go off in today’s mail, so we will see how this goes.
Anyone familiar with my blog here may notice that I have added a new category, A Little Less Junk, for this post. In the future this category will contain my efforts to stop as much waste in my life as I can. I’m not some super eco-nutjob, but I’ve come to realize that there are many things I can do which would make me happier in my own life, while also maybe helping out the world a little.
[...] from their lists. You can find the instructions here. Now, unlike the prescreened credit offers I posted about before, being removed from this list isn’t free. It is going to cost you $1 per name/address combo [...]