Do You Get a Lot of (Snail) Mail as an ADULT?

Not to hijack

Do you get snail mail now (let’s say, other than bills and junk mail)? Magazines, letters, postcards? Are you still writing to athletic teams and the government and receiving photos and pamphlets?

Do you write snail mail now? Send postcards? Has this changed with COVID?

Email and texts have totally taken over snail mail for me.

About the only regular mail I send out these days involves (rarely) paying bills and ordering seeds.

What I receive via the Post Office largely comprises bills, offers to get a “free” meal from people pushing investment and estate planning services, hearing aid ads and promos for Medicare supplement plans (what can I say, it’s a depressing demographic). And seeds.

Credit card bill.
Bill from the guy who changes the water filter for the well.
Paychecks from my part-time job.
Stuff I order like guitar strings etc. UPS often delivers to the post office, where I do a pick up.
Income tax refund check.
All the junk Jackmannii said, and more. I keep the catalog from Sweetwater and it resides in the reading room. The rest get tossed.

I still get a couple of bills in snail mail (primarily the quarterly water/sewer/trash collection bill from the village). I have a subscription to Consumer Reports (a gift from my parents), and my wife still has a couple of physical magazine subscriptions.

My parents, and my mother-in-law, do send us greeting cards in the mail for our birthdays and anniversary, and I still get quite a few Christmas cards from friends and relatives.

Otherwise, it’s all junk mail, other than the occasional package (some of the small hobby and game shops I buy stuff from ship via USPS).

The last I wrote (as in hand-written) snail mail was in 2020, when a friend of mine was in rehab for 30 days. I wrote two or three letters to him (as they had no or very limited internet access there). Before that? Maybe 2003. Which is somewhat odd, as I had been an avid letter writer until then.

As for receiving non-business/non-junk mail? My university still sends me their quarterly magazine. I don’t subscribe to any print magazines any more. I receive birthday cards from my mother-in-law and Christmas cards. But that’s it, so far as I could think of. I can’t remember the last personal letter I’ve received. Probably also back in 2003.

Oh, right! I get two quarterly magazines from my college (one from the college as a whole, and another from the School of Business), and another from my high school.

Ok, actually, I just remembered. Every year I throw some money to my college newspaper, and every year, I get a very nice handwritten note from both the current photo editor (that was my department) and the general manager (who had been the general manager there nearly 30 years ago when I worked at the paper). Essentially, a “thank you” card, but a bit longer and more personal (with the general manager, at least.)

Besides bills (which I get lots) and packages (which I still get regularly) I do get a few physical magazines. Most notably, The New Yorker.

Then there is all the mail that I get only once in a while, but which are still important. Like letters from government agencies or my insurance company.

Personal letters and cards are very rare, but I still get a few every year, especially around the holidays. My son gets more, as lots of people like to mail him checks for gifts.

Bills, but most of them are online, very few are actually mailed. Junk mail, cards from friends and relatives occasionally. Some Social Security info is mailed. That’s about it, much less than in the past. More and more often there is no mail delivered in a day.

Only for birthdays and announcements and an occasionally yearly family update. I don’t consider automated correspondence to be mail mail. I guess if a corporation wrote me a personalized correspondence then I would consider it to be mail even though it wouldn’t be exactly personal, but I can’t remember that happening in decades.

other than a few magazines and things we order and the occasional letter from various government agencies because of benefits and the like due to me and my cousin being disabled I…ts all junk

Although my aunt is of a generation where one waits for the mail like an island cargo cult waiting for that ship in case someone sends something good like a check or something

I send out lots of handwritten letters to family, friends, and acquaintances. Occasionally I get letters back. People do respond to me in person or by phone or email.

I still get magazines, too.

I’ve discovered that, in my own case, if my bills are emailed they tend to get lost among the dozens of emails I get every day. Whereas a paper bill sitting on my desk can’t be ignored so easily. So that’s why I still get mostly paper bills via snail mail.

The exception is bills that are the same every month. Those I set up automatic payments.

A charity I worked with once, and which I want nothing to do with, steadfastly refuses to remove me from their mailing list. Ditto for the animal shelter from which Mrs. H and I adopted a pet a decade ago.

For a time, once per month a I got a glossy copy of ESPN Magazine. I was (and am) only a casual sports fan under the best of circumstances, so how I got on their mailing list I have no idea; I never signed up for a subscription (and it was addressed to me). It stopped after a year.

Magazines will send out complimentary subscriptions like that, typically to people whose demographics are a good fit with their current readers, in hopes that the recipient will like the magazine enough to actually pay to continue the subscription once the free period runs out.

I’ve had Rolling Stone, Popular Mechanics, and Field & Stream all start showing up in my mailbox, unbidden, due to this.

Well shit, why can’t High Times get the memo?

they’re still alive? I thought NORML folded once places started legalizing pot saying “mission accomplished”

I get a fair amount: 2 monthly bills, property tax/home insurance/car registration, bank statements, and I subscribe to a handful of print magazines.

But my dad, who has been gone 3 years next month, still gets 3x more junk mail than I do despite me signing both him and mom up for the national ‘don’t send this dead person junk mail’ registry.

Non-bill and non-junk leaves a couple of birthday cards and maybe a couple of Christmas cards. And the periodic required reports from on our investments. The vast majority of what comes in the mailbox goes right into the recycle can, unopened.