Wednesday, December 20, 2006

That didn't take long... mortgage insurance offers

Less than a week after moving in I was already being deluged with junk mail solicitations for mortgage insurance-- I think I've gotten at least a dozen by now, some with very specific details about my mortgage, which is sort of freaky. Needless to say, I will be turning them down. I have no dependents to worry about, I already have life insurance, and I have enough savings to cover at least a year's worth of expenses if I happened to lose my job.
I wonder what other junk mail I'll have to look forward to as a homeowner? I've already gotten a few things from local locksmiths...

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow - it's awesome that you have an emergency savings account that would cover you for a whole year. Kudos to you!

Anonymous said...

I hate it when people send unsolicity ads containing detailed financial information. Lately, I've been using a group called greendimes (at greendimes.com) to stop it. I've only tried it for a couple of months, and it's not perfect (they're a very, very new company), but it really has made a big difference! Basically, you pay them a fee and they do all the crap to get you of all commercial mailing lists (which is a LOT of work to do on your own - and you have to do it over and over). Their calculations are that you'd spend more in postage doing it yourself than they charge to do it. I'm not sure if that's right or not, but since I sure don't have the time either way, I figured it was worth it for me.

Anonymous said...

Looks like you have fallen victim to a "trigger list". Anytime a lender pulls your credit, your information is sold within hours to anyone willing to pay for a trigger list subscription. Subscribing isn't cheap, so the credit reporting agencies are making a healthy profit off of your personal information. And depending on who they are selling the information to, they may be in violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

You could try to contact each lender or insurance provider individually, but there is a simple, free solution available. You can read all the details at Quarterlife Finance. After my wife and I bought our house, we were receiving between five and twenty solicitations in the mail every day. Now we receive none. Absolutely incredible. I would definitely hesitate to spend any money on a service to remove you from these lists...it is free and easy to take care of it yourself, and chances are they are selling your info as well!

Best of luck waging war against junk mail!

Anonymous said...

I got offers on water purification systems.

But also several coupons for local stores.

Single Ma said...

After about 2 months, my box was flooded with refinance offers that included my financial info. Makes me mad just thinking about it.