Before I set my goals on resolutions for 2009, I need to wrap up my 2008 Resolution.  One of my goals for 2008 was to take back some of the privacy we have given up by making ourselves available on the web via sites like A/R and Facebook, etc.  With out even realizing it, the personal information you make available can quickly snowball.

Phase I of my plan was checking the old Credit Report.   I used www.annualcreditreport.com to get copies of mine and my wife’s.  Be careful of sites pretending to provide Credit Reports – or contact the credit bureaus directly.  This is a quick and easy way to stay ahead of Identity Theft.

Phase II was to cut back on the amount of junk mail/mailing lists that my wife and I were on.  For this, I visited www.proquo.com.  This site allowed me to send requests or print letters to various mailing lists for removal of our names from their lists.

Phase III occured later in the year:  we bought a paper shredder.  Still on the docket is to have previous years’ records professionally and securely shredded.  Some areas offer this as a free service shortly after tax season, so keep an eye on the local paper.

Lastly, I picked this last one up from Andy Rooney:  I saved every prepaid envelope and postcard we received in the mail from various advertisers looking to sign us up for some thing. For All of 2008.

Today, my daughters will be sealing up the empty envelopes with glue stix, and tomorrow they will be mailed back – empty.  Hear that Capital One?  Every single credit card offer you mailed to us this year is getting mailed back to you – without an application.  There’s a whole different pile for Subscription cards for magazines we already had subscriptions to…

Happy 2009!  Thanks for stopping.