LivSimpl

How to: thin your wallet

As a general statement, we tend to collect things. We tuck a receipt or two away in our wallet, perhaps with the intent of recording it in a budget. We put a wrapper or two in our pockets or purse to throw away later.

It doesn’t take too much time for us to accumulate quite a bit of “stuff.” (Think of George Castanza’s wallet.)

I actually had a friend who had so much stuff in his wallet it made him tilt to one side when he sat down, aggravating a serious back problem. When I questioned him about it, insisted he needed everything in his wallet. (He’s a great friend, but stubborn as a mule.)

Finally I convinced him to empty his entire wallet on the table. Together we went through and despite his earlier protests, found quite a few things he could get rid of - expired coupons, old receipts and scraps of paper.

After we threw away the obvious stuff, we went through the rest. Did he really need to carry around a frequent buyer card to a restaurant he hadn’t eaten at in six months? Do you need three credit cards with you at all times? (The answer to that is no - for more than one reason.)

When all was said and done he’d cut his wallet width in half. He knew where things were inside it and wasn’t carrying around a lot of useless things.

Best of all, his butt wasn’t lopsided and his back started feeling better.

Try simplifying your wallet. What’s the oldest, or most useless thing you found? Leave word in the comment and the winner will get a prize.

(I don’t know what the prize is yet, but I’ll mail you something that isn’t completely useless. Tell your friends.)

LivSimpl

Friday, August 31st, 2007 at 12:58 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.