In the last several years, there has been an effort to get bills that were once mailed by the post office online for access electronically. This provides a number of benefits, but also brings a number of drawbacks.

E-bills can be delivered within days of the closing of the billing period. No need to wait over a week for the mail to arrive, visit the mailbox, and hope to get the statements delivered to you. Just login, click E-bills, and select the month you want. You have 6-24 months of bills at your fingertips. You can also download the statements in a number of formats. Save the PDF copies that look just like the paper statements, and you’re good.

Not exactly. You have to remember to save your statements offline, or after twelve months, you could end up losing all the records of the previous months. Some companies will discard your statements and then charge you archive fees to retrieve copies, if they still have them.

You don’t have to worry about identity theft from your mailbox. Many banks allow automatic payment and storage when they receive the E-bills in your account. They also notify you when they receive the electronic statement, or when you haven’t paid a statement due soon.

I prefer to have the best of both worlds. If I can receive the paper statement for my records and pay using a credit card online, I’m game for it. I don’t have to fuss with looking up the paper statements when I’m already online. Some companies force you into signing up for E-bills if you want to pay online.

What seemed to have disappeared recently is the bonus you get when you sign up for E-bills. Companies used to give a couple of bucks for signing up. They transitioned to donating the dollar to organizations, like planting a tree. Now they just sign you up and reap the savings of postage and printing.

And some will charge you for the paper bill. Even more income to look forward to.