I am wondering what people think about offering electronic bank statements. I just started receiving my e-trade account statement electronically. At first I felt a little queasy about it, but now I love it. They send an email once a month for each of our accounts and I believe it tracks if I open each of the emails -- I immediately verify the account and I typically print a copy for my records. Last month we got another request in the mail from our airline mileage program to receive our statement electronically. This time my husband (who is not an computer type) asked if we should do it. I said sure and he now recieves them monthly in his email boxes. He loves it too! Our stack of papers is reduced, which frees up time we would have spent filing everything away. We deal with it immediately, retain an electronic file in our email that is simple to sort and in some cases we print out a paper record.

I'm wondering what others think? I would love to get my bank statement this way also --- now that I bank online, I rarely refer to my paper statement anyway -- I balance everything online.

What are the potential implications of not having a paper copy? I see a lot of upside to this --- what are the potential downsides?

[This message has been edited by mpetry (edited 01-08-2001).]

The only potential risk I can think of is not having access to a record that's needed for the IRS in an audit.

Most of this stuff you can quickly get from your bank if necessary (albeit at some cost), but what about proof of capital or home investments that often predate the records your bank may retain? You bought your home ten years ago, and you sell it. What is your proof of the cost basis if the bank records only go back 7 years and your current financial recordkeeping software can't go back and reconstruct a record (if you have it) created on another version of older software?

On the other hand, you say you print certain things for a paper record. Perhaps you make sure you make these paper archives for important stuff for tax purposes, and let the rest of it drift off into cyberspace at some point.