Spam

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.