I believe there are two basic types of people in the world. Those with their email neatly organized into folders and few, if any, messages in the inbox. Then, there are those whom can live with hundreds or thousands of unread messages. I am definitely the former. I have a very methodical file structure for all of my email accounts, and I like to keep my inboxes empty or nearly empty. Over the previous two months this particular trait has made me ponder just how closely email subscriptions relate to finances. A few short weeks ago on Thanksgiving Day, amidst all of the parade watching, turkey eating, and Christmas shopping, I spent considerable time deleting a plethora of email. Almost every email I expunged from an account was designed around enticing me to save money by buying this particular item right now whether I need said product or not. This deluge of directed marketing emails continued from Thanksgiving Day through Black Friday, into Small Business Saturday, and past Cyber Monday. The constant barrage of emails kept coming the entire holiday season. Finally, I grew tired of hitting delete. I started to use the delete all feature on my smartphone, and inadvertently lost some important emails in the process. This made me consider other options. I remembered a simple fact, I do not have to continue to receive all of those emails. I can opt out of the lists. I can choose to not give out my email when at the register at a store. I can take back control of my email inbox and in the process eliminate much of the dizzying torrent of ads urging me to spend money on things I probably do not need. If you want to take this idea to the next level then evaluate the brands you follow on social media.
Mr. Gragg 