I'm 58.

We get junk snail mail about:

• retirement seminars
• Social Security planning
• over-55 communities
• estate planning
• meal subscription plans (Hello Fresh, etc)
• carpet/furniture cleaning
• lawn services

Valpak, Renewel by Andersen, credit card offers, catalogues, more credit card offers, donation requests…

Most have prepaid return envelopes. Rip it all into pieces stuff in that envelope and send it back! They don't pay for the postage on the envelope until its used. I get very little 'junk mail'. I think they figured me out.

arcy_gw - most of ours comes in the form of postcards!

Pretty much the same as Food.

Lots of Talbots and Ll Bean catalogs. I basically take the days mail and put it directly in the recycling, after briefly riffling through it.

All of the above including some office begging me to have my hearing tested, and buy hearing aides from them, and also letters from neptune regarding funeral and cremation services. Oh, and somebody wanting to buy my home. I wish they would stop bugging me.

I've only lived here two years so I get an array of topics. The most interesting thing was the Guns & Ammo magazine that was misdelivered and belonged to my neighbor. I can't decide if a neighbor with that interest is a good thing or a bad thing. :-)

Since I’ve retired in my mid 50s sometimes I get Fisher Investment letters, few retirement planning dinner postcards at local hotels, Valpak, and few offers for credit cards and lawn services. Other than that not much junk mails. Also all utility bills, bank & investment statements have been delivered electronically so my paper shredder didn’t get much a chance to flex any muscle.

Credit card offers. (Yes I know I can opt-out and probably should do that.) Advertisements for businesses (leaf filters, local businesses, realtors). Catalogs for a variety of companies, some I've purchased from but most from random companies I don't care about.

I opt out of anything I can delivered via mail that is junk. Almost everything I want comes electronically. The USPS could go belly up tomorrow and I wouldn't even miss them. 😄

Agree with the posts above. All I get are grocery store ads, renewal by anderson, and assorted postcards of whatever that don't even get read.

All of the above, plus a statement from ComEd and from the gas company about our energy usage, and comparing us to ”our neighbors”. The electric is rather useless, since without kids at home our usage dropped dramatically, and when our neighbors go away for the season theirs goes down, etc.

We get one bill in the mail, they have no online billing option! It’s the water reclamation district, and we call them our local luddites. You can pay by credit card over the phone, or send a check by snail mail, pay at a bank (one particular bank) or hand-deliver it! DH likes to do that, just to jibe them a little. (you can now do an autopay ACH via the state, for a fee)

A couple of freebie local magazines, featuring a couple of articles about local people, and mostly ads for high-end local sources for women’s apparel, jewelry, kitchen and interior design, and real estate.

My favorite mail is the announcement of someone’s shredding event! Usually a local insurance agent sponsors one twice a year.

We get very little junk mail. Most is from estate agents wanting us to sell our house or new fast food places opening. Supermarkets never send junk mail. And no catalogues.

Valpack, hearing aid ads addressed to me when I hear fine, and my Husband definitely doesn't. A few grocery ads that I don't shop at, and window replacement ads. I open my mail by the trash can where 99% goes. We pay electronically, so we don't get bills. We get Target and Discover statements, that's it. In fact, we haven't gotten anything for four days and wonder why.

I received something from Mutual of Omaha yesterday for the woman we bought this house from. She moved out of state 13 years ago.

I'll probably put it in an envelope and mail it to her, not assume its junk. I came very close to tossing something a few years ago addressed here but to her and decided to forward it to her after all. She's a casual friend, her husband now gone very close to one BIL. I got a thank you note from her - it was an investment company check not an ad!

I do get mail of some importance to me. Communications from old friends and seldom seen distant relatives. Birthday cards. Formal invitations. One annual retirement check early winter that I have not been able to convince them to direct deposit in 5 years of trying!

ETA: Also yesterday - a new debit card from my bank. I had not noticed the one I've been carrying had a Sept '25 expiration date on it.

Mostly junk mail as others describe, little else. It goes immediately into the recycling bin, usually unopened (though my wife seems to treat mail, any mail, as if it were a wrapped birthday present and she can't wait to see what's inside). I haven't found there to be a much that's age related.

I don't bother to empty the mailbox daily, I do it every few days. More frequently isn't worth the effort.

" I can't decide if a neighbor with that interest is a good thing or a bad thing "

Fun2BeHere, if that were me, I would consider it a bad thing. I want nothing to do with men who are as if still little boys (as it was in my Boomer era) and like to go Bang Bang with guns.

I have nothing against the Postal Service and I understand that junk mail and branching out into being a secondary delivery service is its business now. It really, really needs to rationalize its operations to have a viable operating model.

Just for a start - there seem to be more post offices around than libraries. Some are just a mile or two apart in populated areas and out in the boondocks, there's a post office at every wide spot in the road.

They're rarely busy rather than during the few peak hours, days, or times of the year. They can't really all be necessary. I'd bet retail post offices could be reduced by one-third or more for big costs savings without causing a noticeable reduction in the quality of service.

So update. I just collected the mail that I hadn't gotten for three days. It is as follows. UGI heating tune-up card, Target purchase card, coupon for a local pizza place, an actual letter to me from Penn State Health asking if I have trouble walking and they are looking for adults 65 and older who have difficulty walking or climbing stairs, for a 12-month study. It will require three visits to Penn State Hershey and wearing a monitor. Lastly, a large folder filled with local ads. All went it the recycling except the target statement. And since I hike on the AT three miles every day and climb 13 flights a day according to my watch, I'll pass on the study.

Kevin gets the mail from the mailboxes, and he puts all junk mail directly into the recycling, and so I do not see most of it. I do get a lot of offers for cremation, however. I do get important medical mail, including referrals from my doctor's office and statements from the insurance company itemizing what has been paid and what I have paid. I like getting these in the mail, and they are easy to file and retrieve.

Denmark is planning to end letter deliveries by the end of this year, but it is currently extremely expensive to send a letter there - $4.55, and so the volume is way down.

Maybe forty years ago, I read about a local mission that puts on a big Thanksgiving dinner for the homeless. Every year I send them a check -- not a gigantic check, but it's what I can afford. Over the years they've gone from one basic solicitation letter at Thanksgiving to sending me big, fat mailings, with multiple enclosures, for every holiday. I hate to see my donation wasted on all of these mailings. I've even asked them to take me off of their list. I'll send that Thanksgiving check anyway. But they keep sending me that crap and I keep thinking maybe I'll take them off of my charity list.

I check the mail daily and walk past the recycling bin on my way through the garage - some days nothing comes into the house.

In 2019 I went on a Viking Cruise. Viking has never forgotten me. I'm still getting their catalogs. DH suggested that I start notching the door jamb as I toss them into the recycling. There have been times when I receive 3 Viking catalogs in one week.

We don’t get that much junk mail anymore, but do occasionally get the usual leaf filter, campaign ads, we-want-to-buy-your-house card, and insurance someone thinks we need.

I anyone is still getting catalogs and want to cancel them, you can go to a website called Catalog Choice and opt out of a long list they maintain. I did this several years ago and it worked. I forgot about some until Christmas came around and then removed more. It’s a non-profit and they may ask for a small donation afterward but they don’t bug you endlessly anout it. I sent them around $10 a couple of times and that was that.

I've never been on a cruise, but Viking sends me something at least weekly.

i used to get the ads for hearing aids several times a week. i started writing "DECEASED" across my name/address, put them back in the mail box and raised the flag. it took a few months but the senders apparently got the message and now i only get one of these ads every few weeks. i don't know if it's coincidence or if these envelopes were actually returned to the sender but...🤷🏻‍♀️

there was one in particular that was beyond annoying. after getting no response from me, they would send one with the words "FINAL NOTICE" in huge red letters across the front. it looked very official and i wonder how many people saw it on its travels to me and thought "oh boy, she better pay this or they're going to shut her off".

Ninapearl - I know exactly what you are talking about. I had a solicitation from one of my college's alumni affairs office send me a request for a donation emblazoned with that red-lettered "FINAL NOTICE" across the envelope. The envelope was designed to look like a late utility bill.

I usually do not sweat the small stuff - and yes, this is small potatoes. And yet it annoyed me enough that I contacted them about it. I looked up the appropriate leader in their office and sent him a personal email about how tacky and annoying I found it. He actually replied and said they were getting a lot of angry alumni responses, and they decided not to use that type of campaign in the future.

You can call me all kinds of names, but don't you dare send me junk mail that looks like I'm late on paying my bills. LOL.

You can call me all kinds of names, but don't you dare send me junk mail that looks like I'm late on paying my bills.

exactly!!! i am 75 years old. from the time started paying my own bills, i have never one single time been late, not even during holidays when mail is notoriously late. if a holiday is coming up, i pay that bill a week ahead of time.

these pseudo "bills" that arrive with a big red "last chance" label are enough to raise my blood pressure!

" these pseudo "bills" that arrive with a big red "last chance" label are enough to raise my blood pressure! "

I hope not.

If only I had a dollar for every 'Final Notice' I've received from the same company....

I forgot about the mail we used to get for a former owner of our condo. I had no idea of their new address so I would just write 'Not at this Address' and stick it back in the mail. It was an insurance company or bank that kept sending them for 2-3 years.. I finally just started throwing them away. They either didn't get the message, didn't care, they were marketing junk that still carried the person's old address, whatever, I was not going to waste my time any longer.

We get a daily enclosed deck flyer. You know, enclose your deck, add a heater, a huge TV, a propane fire pit, a bar.....then instead of hanging out in your HUGE warm-cozy house in the middle of Winter, you can hang out on your HUGE deck, freezing, waiting for the heaters to warm things up....?? There's NO logic to THAT!

outside playing, I do the same with mail addressed to prior owner - into the recycling bin.

An irony in the world of junk mail that I experienced this week. My USPS carrier delivered a piece of junk mail to my mailbox - sent by the USPS! "Now Hiring! Positions Available Nationwide!"