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Dear Pay Dirt,
My husband and I are fortunate enough to be homeowners with pretty good credit. We get credit card and loan offers in the mail all the time. I’ve been trying to declutter our house, and junk mail is a big issue. Everything goes on the entry way table and its always overflowing. I set up a recycle bin in the entry way for just such physical spam, but my husband won’t use it because he says we have to SHRED all those offers, and our shredder is not big enough to deal with all the constant clutter! Also, the shredder is in his office, and he only gets to it every other month or so, so the workflow doesn’t keep up.
I know that’s the best, most secure way to deal with junk. But really, our recycle bin is kept in the garage until the night before the garbage is collected., then we roll it out to the curb. We always put other recycling on top of the mail.
Is it really that dangerous to just toss those mailers as is? Maybe tear them up by hand first? Please help!
—Drowning in Junk Mail
Dear Drowning,
While I totally understand your husband’s concern, those “pre‑approved” offers are basically advertisements. They look official, but they typically don’t contain enough sensitive information for someone to open an account in your name.
Credit card junk mailers usually just include your name and address. Yes, sometimes there’s an “offer code,” but opening a new credit card requires more than that. A thief would need your Social Security number and also have to go through additional steps to verify your information. The idea that someone could grab a mailer out of your trash and use it to open a credit card in your name is mostly outdated.
That said, identity theft is a serious problem—it’s just that it’s much more likely to happen from something like an online data breach than from physical mail. You can stay safe by regularly checking your credit reports, freezing your credit when you’re not actively applying for anything, using strong passwords (and, ideally, a password manager), and enabling two-factor authentication on your existing financial accounts.
If it helps your husband feel more secure, a practical compromise would be to tear up the portion of the mailer that includes your name, address, and any kind of offer code before you recycle it. Shredding doesn’t hurt, but if it’s causing clutter, suggest a simpler system, like collecting all the junk mail in a smaller, separate bin, then dealing with it once a week.
Link
My husband and I are fortunate enough to be homeowners with pretty good credit. We get credit card and loan offers in the mail all the time. I’ve been trying to declutter our house, and junk mail is a big issue. Everything goes on the entry way table and its always overflowing. I set up a recycle bin in the entry way for just such physical spam, but my husband won’t use it because he says we have to SHRED all those offers, and our shredder is not big enough to deal with all the constant clutter! Also, the shredder is in his office, and he only gets to it every other month or so, so the workflow doesn’t keep up.
I know that’s the best, most secure way to deal with junk. But really, our recycle bin is kept in the garage until the night before the garbage is collected., then we roll it out to the curb. We always put other recycling on top of the mail.
Is it really that dangerous to just toss those mailers as is? Maybe tear them up by hand first? Please help!
—Drowning in Junk Mail
Dear Drowning,
While I totally understand your husband’s concern, those “pre‑approved” offers are basically advertisements. They look official, but they typically don’t contain enough sensitive information for someone to open an account in your name.
Credit card junk mailers usually just include your name and address. Yes, sometimes there’s an “offer code,” but opening a new credit card requires more than that. A thief would need your Social Security number and also have to go through additional steps to verify your information. The idea that someone could grab a mailer out of your trash and use it to open a credit card in your name is mostly outdated.
That said, identity theft is a serious problem—it’s just that it’s much more likely to happen from something like an online data breach than from physical mail. You can stay safe by regularly checking your credit reports, freezing your credit when you’re not actively applying for anything, using strong passwords (and, ideally, a password manager), and enabling two-factor authentication on your existing financial accounts.
If it helps your husband feel more secure, a practical compromise would be to tear up the portion of the mailer that includes your name, address, and any kind of offer code before you recycle it. Shredding doesn’t hurt, but if it’s causing clutter, suggest a simpler system, like collecting all the junk mail in a smaller, separate bin, then dealing with it once a week.
Link
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Take the table out of the entryway for the time being. Put it in the attic for now.
Every day when the mail comes in, take all the junk mail and immediately put it in Husband's office, on the desk. Now it's conveniently located near the shredder, ready to be shredded whenever he gets around to it. (If the hallway recycle bin will fit in the office, put it there as well.)
After a few months, you can put the table back.
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You have a husband problem. There is no way of addressing the task problem without addressing the husband problem.
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