Never Carry More Than Two Credit Cards in Your Wallet
No one wants to think about stealing a wallet, but if so, you want to give the potential thief as little opportunity as possible to steal.
On CNBC, former con artist Frank Abagnale (from Catch Me If You Can ) explains that he only has two credit cards in his wallet : one personal credit card and one business credit card.
The fewer debit and credit cards you carry with you, the less you will have to block or cancel if your wallet disappears.
Abagnale doesn’t have a debit card as they don’t offer the same consumer protection as credit cards – and he advises all of us to leave our debit cards at home as well.
Every time you use a debit card, you put your money and your bank account at risk.
However, debit cards provide one of the easiest ways to access cash, whether you visit an ATM machine or make a purchase and request a cash refund at the checkout. While you can visit a bank branch and withdraw cash from your account this way, I’m sure I’m speaking on behalf of many Lifehacker readers when I say that I haven’t been to a real bank for, say, many years .
Abagnale advises us to have cash on hand at all times, so you need to figure out how to keep a couple of $ 20 in your wallet. However, you can leave your checkbook at home (if you know you are going to write a check that day, Abagnale suggests putting one check in your wallet in advance), as well as other rarely used documents such as social security cards.
The CNBC post lists everything Abagnale thinks you should (and shouldn’t) carry around , so check it out. Essentially, Frank Abagnale is asking us to think like crooks. If someone took your wallet or even rummaged through it while your attention was distracted, how much information would they be able to reveal? How many accounts and lines of credit will they be able to access?
Or, if you want a quick and sweet tip: if we only carry a couple of credit cards with us, we only need to cancel a couple of cards if they are stolen.