It turns out that switching over to paperless billing is quite easy. I checked with my local utilities' websites and all of them (American Electric Power [that's their "paperless" image], Columbia Gas, Time Warner Cable) have options accessible from their home pages (or sometimes from your online account page) to let you choose paperless billing. Easy! That gets rid of a bunch of monthly mail. I have autopay set up for all of my utility bills, so this means I'll need to check my monthly email to monitor my payments, but that actually fits in better with how I work than remembering to look at a bill in an envelope I've tossed on my desk.
You can, of course, do even more. We get periodic prospectus information from our investment company. I don't know about you, but I rarely read these things that have to be sent out by law to all fund customers. In fact, since my wife and I have multiple accounts (for our funds, IRAs, etc), we get the same prospectus information multiple times! I've found that these documents can be sent paperless also - great.
It is easy to go paperless. It doesn't necessarily mean you have less to read, of course. You'll want to review your bills to make sure little Johnny didn't go 2000 text messages over his monthly limit. But, if you are comfortable dropping the hardcopy print of your bills and other information, you can cut down on your mail delivery, save a few trees and save your mail carrier's back from a little extra strain. Not a bad deal.
