More and more offices are going paperless. You can save trees, and time, by going paperless at home, too. Here’s how!
This post may contain affiliate links, which means we may receive a commission if you click a link and purchase something that we have recommended. This commission comes at no additional cost to you, but will help us keep this site up and running and ad free! Thank you for all the support. You’re under no obligation to purchase anything and should only do so if the product will suit your needs.
Digitize Your Signature
If you’re using a Mac, this is easy. Open the Preview app. Go to Tools, Annotate, Signature, and Manage Signature. This will walk you through the process of adding a photo of your signature. Once saved, you can easily add your signature to any PDF document.
Other options for getting signatures digitally include software like DocuSign and ESign.
Sign up for Paperless Banking
Banks still send monthly statements in the mail. They may charge a small fee for this, so signing up for e-statements saves you money, too! Don’t worry, most banks keep the digital statements for as far back as you’d ever want, so you can purge your paper copies.
Tip- Set a reminder on your calendar every month to download your statement
Switch to Digital Billing and Payments
Many utilities, mortgage lenders, and service providers offer this already. In some cases, you can sign up for e-bill directly through your bank. In other cases, you’ll need to sign up through the biller. There should be instructions on your latest bill for how to do that.
Apps like Simplifi, TrueBill, and Trim can help you manage all your online billing if your bank doesn’t have a way to do it. Plus, it helps with old subscriptions and bill negotiations to lower costs.
Once you have digital billing set up, you can pay online either through the biller or through your bank.
Get Rid of Junk Mail
Over 100 billion pieces of junk mail are delivered in the US every year! The EPA reports that 50% of all junk mail ends up in landfills, and is not recycled.
There are a number of ways to unsubscribe from junk snail mail. Learn more about it in one of our recent posts.
Purge Paper
File cabinets can be a thing of the past! Scan and file any paper documents you need to keep. Then appropriately shred them for your safety. When naming the scanned documents, use names that will help you search for and find them if you need them. Be sure to create folders on your computer that mimic the drawers and folder names in your file cabinet so you’ll always know where things are if you need them. I recommended both of these items to a client who purchased them.
Save Documents as PDFs
Now that you’ve gone through this effort, you can easily maintain it. When new bank statements come in, save them as a PDF in the appropriate folder. Ditto for any other documents you may want to save.
Got questions about how to go paperless at home? Let us know in the comments and we’ll try to get you an answer.
