If you lose your wallet to thieves, there are a number of things that are much more painful than cash. To avoid pain and regrets, try to keep these five things out of your wallet.
Your work ID: If you work in an organisation where your work ID lets you swipe in to get office access; especially during odd hours of the night, your business could be at risk if your wallet goes missing.
Giving a thief access to the building could get both you and your employer in trouble. To avoid this, you can use one wallet for your 9-to-5 rounds during the week and another for the weekends.
passwords: Keeping a running list of your passwords, PINs, and alarm codes in your wallet is a quick way of asking for trouble. It would take less than a minute for anyone to figure out what the numbers are for.
Instead of writing them out, you can simply make use of a password manager on your phone or computer instead. The app stores all your passwords for you, so you can make a different one that is hard to crack for every account.
That way, thieves won't have access to every single account just by knowing one of your passwords.
Receipts: You may wonder what big deal lies in a store or bank receipt in your wallet since it doesn't seem to carry much information. However, a skilled crook can use those bits of information to steal your money more effectively.
Your credit card's customer service department might be more likely to believe a crook who happens to know all your recent purchases. Also, a phisher could pose as your favourite restaurant or store via email, putting malware on your computer when you click a link. If you don't need the receipts, don't throw it away—shred it.
Gift cards Like cash, you have no way to get money back from gift cards if you lose them. Your gift cards are just like cash, as you don't need to show any form of identification to use them. Only tuck them in your wallet when you know you'll use them.
All Your Debit And Credit Cards Building up a big stack of debit and credit cards is quite easy. However, having several cards is not the best thing to do. It is best to cap it at two or three to avoid identity theft.
For one thing, spreading your points out into several different cards, will usually not add up to anything useful and may even put you at bigger risk. The more cards you have in your wallet, the more damage a thief can do quickly.
It is best to carry just one credit card and a debit card, and leave the rest at home. If they all get stolen, the bank is not going to get them back to you in an hour. Keeping them separate will give you a safety net.
