I shredded 1999 over the pre-Valentine’s Day weekend — long overdue, this act of turning the paper trail of a year into confetti to stave off the identity thieves and make room for 2011 in the file cabinet.

Feeding the shredder should’ve been a boring, mindless task, but we’ve endured so much change in such a short period of time that going through my box of receipts and documents was like opening a forgotten time capsule.

Looking back at the last year of the 20th century turned into an archeological endeavor and a revelatory experience.

The companies I patronized, many of them strong Florida firms we thought would last forever, and whose bills and statements I destroyed in a final act of acceptance and moving on, have disappeared, morphed into new companies, or are in financial straits today.

High-speed change came with the new millennium, one development after another, in many cases accompanied with the hand-in-hand relationship of declining customer service and lower profits.

We parted ways with institutions, and for the most part, the split was for the worse.

No wonder we’re in a perennial state of exhaustion and mistrust prevails.

In 1999, we filled our prescriptions at Eckerd Drugs and our cable service came in what we thought was overpriced, but in hindsight affordable packages, and the choices were not mind-boggling, but boiled down to, do we want HBO or Showtime?

We shopped for quality and style at bargain sales in Burdines and Lord & Taylor and started 401(k) retirement accounts with the promise that we would retire with a tidy million in a miraculous treasure chest.

Our banks, which had begun to change ever so slightly, were not yet seen as the untrustworthy enemy, issuing risky loans, raising interest rates all over the place, then trying to take away our homes after the fantasies fell apart.

From the 1970s through 1997, I had a special sentimental attachment to Barnett Bank, the largest commercial bank in Florida, as I remember opening my first account at 17 at the branch across from Hialeah Senior High School, a rite of passage as important as filling out the college application. But then “my bank” was purchased by NationsBank, and shortly after that, merged with Bank of America. Change came so fast that in 1999 I had receipts and bank statements with the old name and the new name, and I don’t think that year I was that clear on who exactly stored my money. But I didn’t worry much about it. Now I watch every dime.

No paperwork was sadder to come across than American Airlines’, a company crucial in South Florida as a service provider and employer, now in bankruptcy court, its employees facing massive layoffs.

My 1999 statement revealed that I had 100,000-plus frequent flyer miles to cash in. I seldom flew anything but American, and I was a happy, loyal customer — and an admiring student of the company, sentiments long abandoned after experiencing too many employees acting as if they were doing me a favor by flying me late in uncomfortable, dirty aircraft. Hard to imagine that I had come to know its exemplary management and operations during a year of top-notch business training to which my newspaper’s corporate owner, Knight-Ridder, had sent me.

A memorable exercise in the same executive training program: Write an obituary on our company.

When we read out loud our fictitious tales, we shared hearty laughs at the preposterous scenarios. But Knight-Ridder, once Miami-based, the second largest newspaper company in the country and a major player in town, is gone, sold to McClatchy in 2006.

I could not bring myself to put my last paycheck stub of 1999 to the shredder. It’s a relic.

Love is too grand for mere words, but money speaks volumes.