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Blog: Paper Doll, Tackling The Stacks And Piles
 What's In Your Wallet? (Part 3): A Little Insurance Policy
The last time you heard that a friend's computer has crashed, didn't you vow to do a better job at regularly backing up your hard drive? Has the tale of an aged retiree on a fixed income ever prompted you to check the status of your 401(k)? And when you hear that someone's wallet or purse has been lost or stolen, don't you start imagining what you should be doing to safeguard the contents?
Don't just think. Do!
There
are all sorts of mental and physical precautions you can take to prevent yourself from
misplacing your wallet or having it stolen, but today, we're going to
review the three main options for protecting yourself in case your
wallet IS ever torn asunder from your loving
embrace.
1) WALLET PROTECTION
SERVICES
Way back in the pre-web era,
when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and DiscoverCard was still a novelty,
they offered cardholders a service called The Register. For $33 dollars
for three years of service, cardholders could fill out an extensive
form listing every credit and identification card, number, expiration
date and 800 number and mail it in. (Yes, people still mailed this kind
of personal data. That's right, in 1988, a little 25 cent stamp offered the
vaunted protection equal to shouting Civis
Romanus! ("I am a Roman citizen") in ancient days.)
In return, if your wallet were ever lost or
stolen, one call to the service would have operators scampering about
to identify your missing cards and documents, call all of your card
issuers (including your Department of Motor Vehicles and your local
police) to report the loss/damages, order replacements, and protect
your reputation and credit lines with the initiation of anti-fraud
measures.
Ah, but that was long ago and far
away.
Recovery
services through your credit card company still exist, like The
Register's modern-day equivalent DiscoverCard's
Wallet Protection Services. Individual identity
theft protection companies like Trusted
ID, IdentityGuard, and
WalletLock from Lifelock
also offer lost-wallet services. These are sold at rates ranging from
$2.99-$40/month and often include identity theft protection services,
like credit report monitoring.
Pros:
- Peace of
Mind
- Limited Effort
If you have many, many
credit and other cards in your wallet (in other words, if you ignored
my advice here
and here),
if you place a high dollar value
on your time or are easily annoyed by the Muzak you will hear while
waiting on hold to report each missing item, if you are comfortable
letting one institution have control over all of your personal
information, this kind of service can suit your purposes. Plus, if your
wallet escapes you during travel, when you're least likely to be able
to make use of options #2 and #3, this will let you sleep soundly on
any business or pleasure trip.
Cons:
- Monthly
charges
- Relinquished control (concerns over security and
accuracy)
- Extra effort to update
records
Aside from having to pay for what amounts to
an insurance policy for a tiny
piece of (portable) real estate, you may experience stress
over relinquishing control of your data to a third party--especially if
you are more fearful of the hacking of corporate records than someone
sneaking into your office to spy on your computer.
Also, concern over bureaucracy and
trusting someone else to correct your records accurately can leave you
second-guessing the service. If you spend all that money, month in and
month out, over the years, you don't want to check up on your service
to make sure they adequately handled every call.
2) COPY THE CONTENTS OF YOUR
WALLET
Alternative 1: PHOTOCOPY
For every email you've received
from wives of Nigerian dictators hoping to share a small fortune with
you, you've probably received (from my
mom, if not your own), advice to protect you against the
dangers of modern life: how to prevent being carjacked, how to tell if you're having a heart attack, how to alert other drivers that an
evil mob boss has locked you in the trunk of his car.
So too, you have probably received the advice to
photocopy the front and back of every card in your wallet. This ensures
that you:
A) Have a
pictorial record of
everything you carry in your
wallet
B) Are aware of all of
your card
numbers, the exact name (with or without initials)
listed as cardholder for each, and expiration
dates
C) Know your CVV Security Codes
D) Have the 800 or other toll-free numbers to report a lost or
stolen
card
Pros:
- Everything
listed in A-D above
- No monthly expenses
incurred
Cons:
- You're unlikely to
take the photocopied page(s) with you if you are
traveling.
- You have to make all the phone calls
yourself.
- You're responsible for safeguarding the photocopy
and/or updating when you add or change cards.
- Access to a
public photocopy machine requires a small charge
- By emptying your
wallet in public, you
risk being distracted, leaving items behind in, or near, the copy
machine.
Alternative 2:
SCAN
You can accomplish
the benefits of Alternative 1, with fewer of the cons, by scanning your
cards instead of photocopying them.
If you have easy access to a standard scanner (the kind that
looks like a photocopy machine), it works the same way...lay the items
in related (ID cards, credit cards, etc.) columns/rows, copy, flip them
like pancakes to the other side, and copy again.
If
you use a portable scanner like Neat Receipts, the process will take you longer, as
you'll be doing one at a time, but even this has a built-in advantage:
by methodically taking one item at a time out of your wallet, scanning it and
returning it, there's relatively little likelihood that you'll lose
anything.
Whichever alternative you choose:
- Select a safe
copy/scan location
- Return everything
your wallet (triple-check under the copier lid)
- Safeguard your
copies of your records
3) MAINTAIN A DIGITAL DATABASE OF YOUR CARDS
Instead
of photocopying or scanning, create a spreadsheet with the following
information in columns along the
top:
- Card/Item
- Issuer
(i.e., bank, credit card company, library,
etc.)
- Expiration
Date
- Name on
Card
- Number on
card
- Security
Number
- 800 or
toll-free number to report
loss
- Web
site URL for each issuer (with username/password)
Spreadsheets
aren't your only option, of course. If you use personal finance
software like Quicken or MSMoney, you can enter this data in your
system.
One caution: There are multiple online personal finance services, like Wesabe and Mint, that will allow you to maintain this
information on their servers. Paper Doll loves the web, but at the risk of sounding like a Luddite, I'm not yet comfortable enough with online security of smaller web companies to recommend this method.
If you're a
controlophile (and doesn't that sound better than "control
freak"?), I'd advise sticking with a system you can maintain at
home, without access to the
internet.
Pros:
- No ongoing
charges
- Easy to update
- Easy to safeguard
file with a password
- Portable for trips, if you carry a
password-protected flash
drive
Cons:
- More labor-intensive
(to start) than the other options
- You must double-check against sloppy
typing, especially of numbers
- You must take pains to guard the
security of your information
- You'll still have to call each number in the event of a theft or loss
PUTTING THE PREPARATION TO WORK
Whichever of the above options you choose for protecting your wallet in advance of a
catastrophe, please know that time is of the essence once you realize your wallet is gone.
With most cards,
as
long as you make an effort to contact the card issuers once you know
your wallet
is missing, your maximum exposure is $50/card. Companies will often cover all fraudulent charges as long as you alert them
in a timely
manner, and obviously, alerting them is easier when you know WHAT
you've lost.
If your wallet is stolen and you selected options #2 or #3, you must hunker down with a pen and pad of paper to call and report each missing item. Next week, in the final post of this series, we'll walk through all the steps of what to do if your wallet has disappeared.
So, off you go--index the contents of your wallet and you can sleep easily tonight. Unless you haven't yet backed up your computer or checked on that 401(k)...
posted on: 7/29/2008 10:30:00 AM by Julie Bestry
category: Paper
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Paper Doll, Tackling The Stacks And Piles
by Julie Bestry
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Julie Bestry, President of Best Results Organizing in Chattanooga, TN, is a Certified Professional Organizer®, speaker and author. Julie helps overwhelmed individuals and businesses save time and money, reduce stress and increase productivity through new organizational skills and systems.
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