No this article isn’t about a Capital One Commercial, although I’m not gonna lie, any commercial featuring Samuel L. Jackson has got to be good! Instead, today we’re going to dissect exactly what is and isn’t in my wallet. I’ve been on this weird semi-minimalist kick over the past few months where I’m trying to make my life more efficient by removing everything that I don’t use. And even though it might not seem like a big deal, most people’s wallets carry a lot of un-needed junk.
In fact, my minimalist streak isn’t limited to material things either. I’ve turned off all push notifications on my phone (E-mail, FB, etc) in an attempt to be more efficient and I try to only check e-mail a few times a day now. I can’t tell you how many times I used to look at my phone just to look at it. Wait, so where was I? Right, back to my wallet!
No Costanza Wallet For Me
I actually used to sport a pretty large wallet with all sorts of loyalty cards, coupons, receipts, cash and credit cards. But a few years ago I switched to a smaller wallet and loved it. I even experimented for a while with a hair band wrapped around my cards and cash. It worked ok but I ended up wanting something a little bit nicer.
While browsing for a gift for my brother’s birthday (he wanted a wallet) I ended up finding a half wallet/half money clip that would end up suiting me perfectly. It was only $10 on Amazon and after a couple months of use it has now become my favorite wallet ever. So let’s take a look and see what’s inside of it.
One Credit Card
Right now, I’m taking a little break from churning cards because frankly I’ve gotten so good at it I can’t spend the points fast enough. I’ve spent almost 600,000 points (got about $15,000 in value out of them) in the last year alone and my aggregate account balance according to Award Wallet is still over seven figures. Obviously, this is a good problem to have but it also means that I get to go back to spending on just one credit card for now instead of trying to hit a bunch of minimum spends on new cards.
The one card I keep in my wallet right now though is my Chase Sapphire Preferred Card. It gets me 2x points on travel and dining and 1x on pretty much everything else. I have a few cards that could get me a little higher cash back on certain items like gas and groceries but for me it just isn’t worth the hassle of carrying around an extra card. Remember, I’m trying to become a more minimalist-simple-efficient person. And the cash back pales in comparison to the rewards I can get from just one sign-up bonus.
By the way, if you’re interested in signing up for the CSP card you can get a 40,000 point bonus when I send you a referral link. I’ll receive a small commission so it’s a great way to support the site. E-mail me for details.
One ATM Card
I will never ever understand why anyone would pay an ATM or checking fee when there are so many banks that offer these services for free. I haven’t paid an ATM fee in over 5 years and that’s why I carry my Ally ATM card with me everywhere I go. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had friends tell me, “Dude, we need to find a Chase ATM”. Don’t let ATM’s control your life, get a good ATM card from an online bank like Ally or Chuck Schwab.
Driver’s License
My wallet/money clip has a nice little ID card holder that faces outwards so most of the time I don’t even have to take my driver’s license out of the wallet if someone wants to see it. See how efficient that is. There’s not much else to say about this one.
4 Business Cards
Since I’m always networking and talking to people about my online businesses it’s imperative that I have at least a few business cards on me at all times. I try to keep two cards for my finance blog and two cards for my rideshare site on me at all times. I would keep more but my wallet wouldn’t really be able to handle them. I do keep spares in my car, at work and at home though just in case I run out.
$61
I rarely have cash but since I just got back from Vegas I had a lot at the time. And since this wallet has a really cool magnetic money clip, it’s easy to keep it in place. Most of the time though, I normally only carry $20 or less in small bills. If I really need more than that, I can stop by any ATM or pay someone with Venmo 🙂
So those are all the things that I carry in my wallet. Were you surprised at how little junk/clutter there is and what would you say about your own wallet if you had to do an audit?
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My wallet definitely has a lot in it. I carry two credit cards, probably 10 business cards, free member cards to pretty much everywhere (such as Qdoba), receipts, some makeup, and probably a lot of trash. Haha! I’m a mess.
Haha that is a lot, I kind of gave up on a lot of that stuff in favor of simplicity. Feels good to be free 🙂
I have MANY rewards cards and I don’t carry them any more… You can obtain a barcode generator software program to reproduce the barcode for those products… Some even work now with taking a photo and scanning the phone or have an APP for it. I still use my old fashion ones and I just tape the bar code onto my Credit cards in a few places so I am not carrying extra cards.. I generally have 2 CC’s and 1 debit card so I manage to fit them all on those.
Tim, you’re going to love my article next week about Loop Pay. Really cool new product that lets you put all your cc’s, gift cards, loyalty cards etc onto your phone and is accepted everywhere. The technology is so cool, you just hold the Loop Pay device up to a reader and it works!
Looks pretty functional!! I still have a Iphone 4S and probably will for quite some time since It is a company issued phone and suits my needs so I don’t have a secondary phone.
I have a pretty small wallet and purse too. My purse just fits my keys, waller, envelope for cash, coin purse, chapstick, and one or two small pieces of paper. In my wallet, I keep my bus pass, my credit union and Schwab debit cards, my driver’s license and health card, my Barclaycard, my Chase Freedom, and my Fidelity Amex as a backup, plus a $20 bill, and some loyalty cards for lunch places near work. It’s a small wallet, but it fits a lot!
Nice. I used to keep my health card, but then I just took a picture of it with my phone and eliminated it! 🙂
It is great to keep that info really handy so in Emergency cases someone is not flipping around for it. For Apple the new IOS had the emergency contacts in the phone which is great as you don’t need the pin number to access it and it you can put in all your vitals…
I leave it in my wallet because of crime shows in which that’s how someone gets you into the hospital. I can get the number off an app on my phone myself though 🙂
Great post!! I carry one credit card, 2 debit cards, driver’s license and a few other miscellaneous cards for stores and what not. I like to keep it simple!!
Hope you have a great weekend!!
Why the two debit cards?
We have two checking accounts – one is our personal account and the other is my husband’s business account, but that account gets used for paying bills and some other random expenses too! 🙂
I keep $100 cash in my wallet for those emergencies where I may not be able to access an ATM or get cash and then I have it.. RARELY have I ever used it… it is just cheap insurance. I keep Credit cards but usually by Type.. AMEX, Visa, MasterCard…. so I don’t have an issue of a merchant doesn’t accept a certain type, or there is an error with 1 of the service providers.. It always leaves me with a back up. License and my vehicle registration and insurance.
I keep my vehicle info on my person as there are way to many break-ins and that makes it easy for someone to obtain your address if they want to.
Your reasoning is all very logical but I just don’t like having that much stuff in my wallet that I will likely never use. Luckily, technology is starting to make it so we don’t have to carry everything anymore.
Yeah.. Cars get broken into daily in my local… hence the only reason I do it.. but it seems a bit too far.. I did mange to shrink them all down on a single small paper I folded up. It still seems legible enough should I need to present it to an officer.
Always interesting to hear the nitty gritty financial details like these. I currently have my Cap One 360 debit card (looking to go back to Schwab again soon), my Fidelity 2% card I use for most purchases and my AMEX blue cash preferred for groceries since that’s our main expense. It also gices 3% for gas too so that makes it easy. I’m planning to get a CSP so I will be in touch with you on that. Thanks for the insight!