5 Minutes To Save 5 Years
Unless you are a masochist, you probably don’t enjoy all of those “congrats you have been pre-approved for xyz credit card” offers that plague your mailbox. A long time ago, I read the fine print and there is a way out!!
You can stop the prescreened offers by going to https://www.optoutprescreen.com/.
Scroll down and click on the blue button.
You will then have the choice to opt-in, opt-out electronically (5 year), or opt-out by mail (permanent).
Select the electronic option (I’ll explain a bit later why the mail option is a waste of time and money).
You should now see a big form. The good news is that most of these fields are NOT REQUIRED. I’ve highlighted in green the required fields.
- First Name
- Last Name
- Date of Birth
- Address
- Captcha
Click on Confirm and you will get a confirmation page. In a couple of months that junk mail should be gone!
The Catch
I did this back in College (a long long time ago) and there is definitely a catch. If at any time you have a hard inquiry, say for example you apply for a credit card or loan, then you are put back on the list. That is why I wouldn’t recommend spending the extra time and money (postage) to do the permanent mail opt-out, because it really isn’t permanent. It DOES work. I enjoyed several years of no offers. Then I started shopping around for a house and applying for mortgages and BAM, back to the junk mail circus.
So there you have it, spend 5 minutes now to save some time and trees.