Weekly Poll; How Much Do You Mail?
This week’s poll is about the use of the U.S. Mail. We all receive mail but my question is how how much you send out. Take the poll in the upper right hand corner of the main page.
The post office ended its first quarter — October 1 through December 31 — with a net loss of $384 million caused by a drop in mail volume of 5.2 billion pieces. The 9.3 percent drop was the eighth consecutive quarter of volume declines, the agency said. (Source: CNN)
In a typical year I stamp and mail fewer than 10 items. Where possible I try to receive mail electronically. Payments are done online. I’m going to try to get my condo association to have a paper recycling bin near our mailboxes to make it easier to pitch junk mail.
To save costs one option is reducing delivery from six days a week to five. The postal service needs Congress to authorize that change.
I do almost everything online. In the past year I mailed some postcards on vacation and a couple tax forms. I could survive without the post office.
Mailing something is usually a pleasure now, since most of my bills are handled electronically. I enjoy writing and receiving cards and letters, but too few people do such things anymore.
If I could make a suggestion to the US Post Office, it would be this:
First, make all of your stamps “forever stamps” – that is, no matter when or what you paid for a “first class” or “postcard” stamp, it can be used at anytime in the future to mail something.
Second, stop with the Chinese water torture, penny-by-painful-penny price increases for stamps. Instead, announce that the price of a first class stamp will go up to $0.50 as of whenever (perhaps the beginning of the USPS fiscal year?) and that postcard stamps will rise to $0.35 at the same time.
Third, commit to holding the newly announced prices for a minimum of five years.
Fourth, run a series of ads reminding people to stock up on those “forever stamps” before the price increase.
Fifth, develop an adopt-a-school program where USPS personnel work with local schools to rekindle interest in letter-writing. As an employer, it has been my experience that texting (combined with reduced emphasis on teaching classic grammer, punctuation, sentence structure, et. al.) is destroying the coming generation’s ability to communicate effectively in writing.
USPS promotions and contests related to writing, sending, and receiving letters could begin to help younger folks understand the pleasure of writing and reading letters. Email is fine and texting, blogging, and twittering have their place, but getting a letter in the mail has more meaning somehow.
The biggest thing I mail now is postcards, holiday/birthday cards and gifts to friends in other cities. Most people don’t do that much anymore though.
I rarely mail anything like bills, I do that all online if at all possible. However I mail an average of 1 letter or postcard per week for pleasure. I have a love of stationery and letter writing and take pleasure in sending mail love to friends.
Recently, I’ve started to convert back to mailing my bills in envelopes with checks. I find it has helped me to see a check written out, sitting on the table with all the others, to realize how much I spend on certain bills and expenses each month. Sure, it costs a few bucks to mail these, and it definitely takes more time to write out the checks and envelopes than to make a few clicks online, but the results are that I have a much better grasp of the bigger picture of my spending.
I think that going to back to stamps, envelopes, and checks might serve as a good financial management tool in this economic era, while also helping the post office increase their revenue.
I ALWAYS print and mail my income tax forms. Despite having to use multiple stamps to mail each tome to the IRS and State of Michigan, it gives me great pleasure to subject the government to the pain of reading, scanning, and transcribing each page (or whatever it is that they do).
I’d be fine with my mail coming only 3 days a week, M-W-F or T-T-S. This could allow one carrier to cover two routes.
i still mail all of my bills and anything else that is not ultra time-sensitive. it feels safer to me than sending things electronically. our mail system is an amazing thing, but unfortunately it gets abused by advertisers. i think we’ll end up sorry if we cut it back too much.