Do Not Discard!!!

I've learned that when an envelope comes with Do Not Discard!!! on it, it's trashable. I do open it -- every so often, it really is something to keep -- but I do it walking over to the trash bin. Same thing with Important! My insurance company sends material about the policies in an envelope marked Important Insurance Papers, but they've also taken to making some of their marketing literature the same way. I subscribe to the Kiplinger Personal Finance magazine; every so often, I'll get a letter marked (usually in red) FINAL ISSUE -- only it turns out that it's referring to the freebie that's enclosed, meaning that this will be the only one I get unless I subscribe. And, of course, anything -- anything -- marked as PERSONAL CONFIDENTIAL and POSTMASTER INSTRUCTIONS can be tossed without looking at it.

Everything so often, you hear about elderly people thinking that these are bills that they have to pay. My mother was kind of that way, but she would ask us. Virtually every time, we'd tell her she could pitch it. Maybe I should save it, she'd say, and we'd say Here, let us toss it for you. Sometimes they really ARE bills, but even they don't necessarily have to be paid -- like the initial bill from her hospital stay, which did not note that the insurance people hadn't been asked to pay yet, so this was really just a first cut. I shudder to think how long they'd keep her money before refunding it -- or whether the money would get refunded to the insurance people, instead.

Okay, you can discard this now.