How many sheets-per-pass should I look for?

Light personal use (a few bills a week) is fine at 6–8 sheets. Home offices that shred mail in stacks tend to be happier at 12–18 sheets per pass, because feeding folded junk mail effectively uses 3–4 sheets of capacity at once. For multi-user offices or anyone shredding hundreds of pages at a sitting, look at auto-feed models that take 100+ sheets in the hopper.