what’s in your wallet?

photo credit: myrtti

While we were organizing the hubby’s stuff for his trip, I decided to guard against the possibility of a lost wallet while he travels.  I took everything out of his wallet and sorted out the non-essentials from the important things. I did the same triage on my wallet. Below is my easy list on how to organize your wallet, and guard against identity theft.

Take everything out of your wallets, and sort into 3 piles. Discard, File, and Copy.

Discard:

• old receipts
• old appointment cards
• business cards that are outdated/non-essential

File:

• medical receipts (in case of audit these go in our tax file)
• credit cards we are not using (if they are still open they go in the safe, if they are closed they get cut up, see Bargaineering’s post for info on destroying your old cards
• membership cards we rarely use

Make copies (front and back):

• Driver’s license (and address change card)
• Credit cards (phone numbers to call are listed on the back)
• Insurance cards

By maintaining copies we have access to our account numbers and the phone numbers of our various card companies. This will make it easy to find all the relevant info if one of use loses our wallet.

Now our wallets are lighter, and I feel 1 step closer to being DONE our “In Case of Emergency” files.  Copies went immediately in our fireproof safe. I’m creating a secondary folder that will be maintained off-site. I plan to update our copies and purge our wallets quarterly.

Do you have copies of what is in your wallet? If not, I recommend it!

Kelly

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Tagged as: in case of emergency, organization