Don,

as we have the sole "physical" mailed copy, we're pretty
sure no one is seeing the paper copies, either.

That doesn't prevent hackers from accessing the online electronic
versions. Just ask Home Depot, Target, Sony, etc...

One of my checking accounts tried to go that route -- wanting
$8.95/month for the paper copies of the statements (thinking that
would coerce me into going electronic). I thanked them for their
offer by closing the account.

Unfortunately, there are no alternatives for many of my bills (garbage,
electric, cable internet, etc.). You either pay the paper fee or go
electronic.

use plastic and cash for most payments so just pay off the
credit card companies each month.

Yep, same here. I'm sure the banks don't like us as we have't paid a
finance charge in many, many years.

An order of 100 checks can last me many years. I am always amused
when I see these folks with 5-digit check numbers!

We're still using the same checks we bought 25+ years ago. We're up to
check number 2200 now. We almost never use checks anymore. The few places
that still required them (income taxes, property taxes, etc.) have now
gone electronic too.

We still have several books of checks left from that original order.
They'll probably last the rest of our lives.

you're reliant on a medium that you can't implicitly verify (can
you LOOK at a thumb drive/CD/DVD/etc. and KNOW that it is intact?)

Flash drives and optical discs are bad backup mediums. I think flash
drives are rated for only 5 years, and I've had CD's become unreadable
after just a year. I only use those for short term storage, specifically
when I need to mail data to someone else.

Blu-Ray's are "supposed" to be longer lasting (25+ years), but I don't
trust them for my sole backups. There are discs made by M-Disc that are
supposed to last 1000+ years, but the cost and storage limits are still
an issue.

I'm more about redundancy. I backup to hard drives because they're fast,
inexpensive, and can store a lot of data. But I EXPECT the drive to fail
at some point, so I have multiple hard drive backups. I also backup
important data to BluRay discs every so often just to have another copy.

The one downside to rewriteable backups (flash drives and hard drives) is
that the data can change. If the data on my main drive is corrupted
(drive failure, virus, etc.), my automated backups can copy that
corrupted data to my backup drive (overwriting the previous backup with
the new corrupted backup). I may not discover it until it is too late.
That's one of the reasons I still backup to BluRays every now and then.
As long as the disc is still readable, I know the data won't change.

As for verifying the data, there are programs that can calculate MD5
hashes for the files on the drive. This allows you to quickly verify that
the files on the drive have not changed since they were written to the
drive. Of course, it's a time consuming process to calculate the hashes,
and I'm probably not going to take the time to verify the documents. So,
I stopped doing the MD5 hashing, and just rely on multiple copies.

Paper documents aren't necessarily foolproof either. A while back I went
through our fire safe to clean out documents we no longer needed. I was
surprised to find that most of the thermal printed documents (most store
receipts) were completely faded. They were just white pieces of paper.
Thankfully, I had previously scanned the important receipts so I still
had electronic copies.

You could have similar issues with fire, water damage, or insects.

I find *using* the documents in electronic form to be tedious.

It took me a while to adapt to balancing our checkbooks using the PDF
bank statements instead of the printed statements I was used to. Now it
seems just as easy as the paper versions.

Learn to cook better! : (I find Pepto-Bismol to be *nasty* stuff!)

We cook well, but sometimes we might drink a little too much, or eat
something we knew we shouldn't. For example, I hadn't eaten a donut in
years but gave in to temptation last week and bought some maple bars. Big
mistake, I was up all night with indigestion. I won't do that again. I
just can't tolerate fatty foods like that anymore.

I hate the liquid version of Pepto-Bismol too, but the pill versions work
just as well without the yucky factor.

I use Advil for the occasional headache

I don't have any allergies and rarely get a headache. But Advil does work
best for headaches. It also works good for things like sore throats, or
swelling. It doesn't seem to do anything for sore muscles though.

We find Aleve to be a miracle drug for muscle pain.

Anthony Watson
www.watsondiy.com
www.mountainsoftware.com