By now, most of us know the importance of destroying sensitive documents as a way to reduce our risk of identity theft. Once we decide to take action, there are a number of different ways to actually destroy the information.

Many items, such as receipts and bank statements, are suitable for burning. As long as plastic envelope windows and staples are removed, burning items significantly reduces their volume, and makes them all but impossible to reconstruct. If you regularly use a fireplace or wood stove to heat your home, burning documents may be a viable option. This method may pose some challenges in warmer months, so a backup method may be necessary.

Anyone who’s walked through an office supply store knows the multitude of options for purchasing a home shredder. Prices vary widely and options include sheet capacity, type of cut, size of resulting pieces, ability to shred credit cards, CDs, and more. A home shredder can be extremely cost effective and an excellent way to stay on top of your document destruction needs. When I return from the mailbox each day, the first thing I do is rip my address off of each item and head right to the shredder.

While home shredders are usually suitable for destroying new documents, you may have a stash of many documents to destroy. Shredding a few years’ worth of documents will likely put your home shredder to the test. Businesses that generate significant amounts of sensitive documents face a similar dilemma. In these situations, shred-on-premises, or retail shredding centers can be used. They’ll either drive a shredding truck to you, or you can bring your documents to their storefront.

One additional option is to make use of community shredding days. Once such event, the Better Business Bureau’s Secure Your ID Day, was featured in a recent post. You can also check with your local retail shredding center, many of which host free community shredding events (for non-business documents) on a regular basis. The downside of this method is that documents accumulate between events, but free is a hard price to beat.

Whichever method works best for you, the important thing is not how you destroy your sensitive documents, but that you do destroy them. It may seem less expensive to just throw the information away, but if that leads to identity theft it could end up costing you considerably more.

As its name implies, your rewards credit card will reward you for using it in compliance with the rules of the card. Comparing what you give up to have such a card with what you get in terms of rewards may lead to the conclusion that it’s not worth having.

The standard argument for having a rewards card is that if you’re going to use a credit card anyway, you might as well get something for it. This would be true if your rewards card had the same terms as your other card, but that is rarely the case. In fact, the average interest rate for rewards cards is reported to be more than two percent higher than for non-rewards cards. You are losing money by paying an extra 2% in interest if your rewards are anything less than 2%. The same would be true if an annual fee were to cost you more than the value of your rewards.

Another question to ask about your card is how useable your rewards truly are. While the restrictions of travel rewards cards have improved somewhat, if you have to take less desirable connections, fly at worse times, and be the first passenger to get bumped from an overcrowded flight, is your “free” ticket really worth as much as you think? That’s one of the reasons why I like to take my rewards as cash. At higher point amounts, my cash payout is as good as other rewards (for example $500 cash versus a plane ticket up to $500).

One last point to consider is whether you have your rewards card to earn a prize you have no hope of earning. I recently received a brochure from a rewards card that was showing all of the great items I could redeem 100,000 points for. Everything from big-screen TVs, boats, and snowmobiles, to a 1-year lease on a gas-guzzling Hummer was available at that level. Unfortunately, at the rate I would use the card, I would earn less than 100 points per year with the card. Using a card because of the prizes I could earn in one thousand years probably isn’t the best idea.

One of the few ways to make reward cards worthwhile is to get a card with no annual fee and pay off the balance in full each month. This is the preferred strategy for all credit card use, but can really make a rewards card rewarding. By purchasing as much as possible with my rewards card, while never exceeding what I’ll be able to pay off in full at the end of the month, I earn as many rewards as possible without devaluing those rewards by having to pay a premium interest rate on the balance. If you can use a rewards card in this way, it may be worth it to you as well.

After a successful inaugural “Secure Your ID Day” earlier this year, the Better Business Bureau and the credit reporting agency Equifax will be holding an encore event on September 20th.

The event aims to educate the public about the importance of destroying personal information to help prevent identity theft as well as provide an opportunity to do just that. Participants can bring sensitive documents to the event and have them shredded free of charge.

Cleaning out your filing cabinets between now and September 20th can generate a lot more material than you can reasonably destroy by yourself. It would certainly be better to destroy sensitive documents as soon as they are no longer needed, but this event can be used as a starting point for better habits. Once the backlog of unnecessary documents is destroyed, future documents can be destroyed personally.

Sensitive documents are anything that contains personal, medical, or financial information about you. Anything that contains your name, account numbers, or similar information is included. Obviously some items, such as old tax returns, may be more sensitive than others, but all personal information poses a risk of identity theft. Even junk mail that contains your address falls into this category.

The first event was held on May 3rd in 60 major cities. A total of 494,926 pounds of sensitive documents were destroyed! Removing the risk of identity theft from such a large amount of information is a great start, but there is certainly more work to be done. To find out where the event will be held near you, visit the Better Business Bureau’s Secure Your ID website.

Ah, fall. There is something refreshing about fall. For students it signals the beginning of a new school year, and for new college freshman, one of the most significant moments of your growing up: Buying stuff on your own.

Yes, gone are the days of a furnished home courtesy of your parents. And fresh fruit and a full pantry at a moment’s notice? No more. Need laundry done? I hope you have some quarters.

Speaking of quarters, going to college without knowing how to handle your money is a disaster waiting to happen. Before you charge that new $2,000 laptop read my 7 rules of money for new college students...

1. Have ONE credit card.

Yes, just one. You don't need any more than one to build your credit.

2. Get a cushion. No, not a beanbag!

Overdraft fees can kill your spirit faster than any sorority girl rejection. Always keep a minimum of $500 in your checking account. This takes mental discipline. Once you've got that $500 in there, forget about. It's like if you've got $650, you really only have $150. Start doing this now.

3. ABU - Always Buy Used

Craigslist and eBay are your friends. Need I say more?

4. Take Daddy's Money, but Remember This...

If your parents are helping you with college, that's great. They've worked hard to help with your schooling, and you should without a doubt accept their help. Just remember that someday (i.e. graduation) the financial help likely should and will end.

Nothing makes you feel more grown up than stopping assistance from your parents and being financially independent.

5. Always be Cheap. You Can be Frugal Later!

Not only is it socially OK to be a cheapskate during your college years, it's often the only way to get by. Embrace your inner cheapskate. Your future, smarter self will thank you for not racking up the credit card balance.

6. Remember, Money Can't Buy Friends

Sure, having a killer car is nice. Always picking up the tab will surely please people. However, once you max out your credit card or your trust fund runs out, will you still have your entourage?

Don't use money to impress anyone in college. You'll just look stupid pretending you somehow "earned" enough at your unpaid internship to buy that 50-inch plasma TV.

7. Set Up a Simple Budget

It doesn't need to be fancy. You can even do it on a napkin in the cafeteria. List your bills each month, and budget out your other expenses. Look at your spending each month and stick to your limits!

Now, I'm off to have a Cup o' Noodles. All this college nostalgia is getting to me...

There’s an ongoing debate about whether or not you should prepay your mortgage. The general consensus is that if extra payments could be invested elsewhere for better returns, then prepaying your mortgage actually costs you money. I’ve covered both sides: why prepaying is a good idea, and whether it’s a mistake.

When you prepay, you have a known rate of return because you basically save the interest that would have been charged if you hadn’t prepaid. You may be able to find a better return elsewhere, but must typically take on additional risk to get that better return. You also have to actually invest that extra money. If you decide not to prepay because you could get a better return elsewhere, that only makes sense if you actually do get a better return elsewhere. If you instead use that extra money to go on a shopping spree, vacation, etc., your logic will be seriously flawed.

Assuming you decide that prepaying your mortgage is a prudent option for you, the next question is how much to prepay. One simple method is to simply double the amount that you pay towards principal each month. The nice thing about this method is that the extra amount you pay each month will start small and grow over time. Presumably your income will grow over this period as well. Other methods, such as paying 1/12 extra each month, also reduce the amount you pay, but cost just as much at the beginning as they do at the end. Though payments would get easier as time goes by, making those first few payments could be rather difficult.

Paying double the principal amount has the nice effect of cutting the length of your loan in half. If you were sure that you could always make such payments, you might be better off getting a loan for half the term (a 15-year versus a 30-year mortgage, for example). While that would have the same effect, and may lower your interest rate, doing so would obligate you to pay that higher amount each month. Prepaying on a longer-term mortgage gives you many of the same benefits, but also the flexibility to stop making the extra payments if you should face financial hardship.

There are many schools of thought about how to prepay your mortgage and whether or not you should do it at all. If you decide that prepayment is right for you, then paying double principal will start simple and grow over time while allowing you to pay off your mortgage in roughly half the time.