Reducing Junk Mail and Junk Calls

Welcome to Saving Money with Andrew!

I get a lot of junk mail, mostly catalogs. I don’t like waste, I care about the environment, and it’s just annoying to throw them in the trash each day. So I was very glad to hear from a reader last week about ways to stop unsolicited mail.

After doing some research, there appear to be four decent and legitimate options for reducing junk mail and unsolicited phone calls:

Catalog Choice

Catalog Choice is a great and free (albeit time-consuming) service, formerly a nonprofit but now owned by Equifax, one of the credit reporting agencies. First, you provide your name and address. Next, each time you receive a catalog, you can enter the name of the catalog on the website and they will send a note to the company to remove you from future mailings.

DMAchoice

DMAchoice is a service offered by the “Association of National Advertisers” (a trade association), which allows you to unsubscribe from all direct mail for 10 years for a one-time $2 fee per recipient. Seems a small price to pay, so I signed my wife and me up for a new membership.

OptOutPrescreen

OptOutPrescreen is a great free service to opt out of receiving any targeted mailings of credit card and insurance offers. You can sign up online to opt out for five years, or mail in a form to stop receiving these offers permanently. I was a little nervous to provide personal info on the site, but it’s listed by the US Federal Trade Commission (the FTC) and is legit.

The Do-Not-Call Registry

Finally, you should probably register your phone numbers for the national Do Not Call registry if you haven’t already, and join the 244 million other phone numbers who have requested not to receive unsolicited phone calls.

Is it perfect? Not at all—I still get plenty of phone calls about extended warranties, insurance, and occasionally strange telemarketing calls in Chinese. But does it help a little? Probably. It’s free and takes about 60 seconds to add your number(s).

And now, Andrew’s pick(s) of the week:

Have we been tying our shoes wrong all these years? This three minute video taught me the “strong” form of shoe tying, and two minutes of practice later, I was off to the races.

Running a Maine Resort This Summer Was No Vacation

Sports card prices have gone crazy! “A 1952 mint condition Mickey Mantle baseball card sold for $12.6 million on Sunday, a record price for a piece of sports memorabilia.”

I hope this has been helpful. If you liked it, please share it on social media! Also, please send me your feedback, requests, and success stories.