Sunday, February 15, 2009

What's In Your Wallet?

Hi everyone. It's Sunday night here, and I feel like I haven't been all that productive today. I want to do something productive tonight, but I'm a little too lazy/tired to do laundry or clean the house. So I decided that I'd just organize my wallet instead. I just started this task, and have decided that you can pretty much figure out what's going on in my life just by looking at my wallet. When you combine what I have in there, as well as looking at the hierarchy of cards in the wallet pockets, you can see how things are going. So the credit and debit cards always get the #1 position in their respective side pockets. Slots 2-10 (or so) are determined based on last use. So after I use a card, it leaves it's previous spot and moves to the #2 slot, directly behind the credit/debit card. The previous #2 card moves to slot #3 and so on. So proximity to the debit/credit card lets us know what I've been up to. Here's what this means:

Qdoba Q Card - If the frequent burrito-eating card is near the front of my wallet, it probably means that I haven't been paying attention to what I've been eating (i.e. eating way too many burritos). The Q Card ended up in the front of the wallet frequently when I worked in the office. We had a Qdoba across the street, so I was a frequent visitor. Fortunately, the Q Card is currently in the back with the expired car insurance cards, so that's a good sign. Oh, and don't worry, there are some non-expired car insurance cards in there too.

Health Insurance Card - You'd think that having the health insurance card near the front of the wallet would mean that I've been to the doctor recently. It doesn't. I don't go to the doctor as much as I should. I don't really have a general practitioner here in Charlotte. Actually, I never did in Indianapolis either, and I lived there for four years. Having the health insurance card near the front just means that it's the beginning of the year, and I probably just got my new cards in the mail. I didn't explain that part, but new cards usually get to go into the #2 slot.

College ID (circa 1998) - I'm not sure why this one is still in my wallet. I used to keep it in there for when places have college discounts. Now that I'm 28 and have rapidly graying hair, I doubt I could pass for a college student. Oh, now I remember why I keep it in there...it's for when people are comparing really bad drivers license pictures. My license picture is okay, but my college I.D. photo is pretty terrible, so I usually share that one. I have really short hair and a half dozen chins. It looks like my boot camp photo from some fat guy army. So that's why that one is in there. If it's near the front, then it probably means someone was recently talking about bad drivers license pictures and I shared that one.

Blockbuster Card - This one hasn't made it into slots 2-8 in the past couple of years. Do those places still exist? It's amazing how you don't notice places if you have absolutely no use for them. 

Sam's Club Membership Card - If this one is near the front, it means one of three things:

1. I'm being frugal and impractical. Buying 128 ounces of something when 24 would probably be overkill, but saving money in the process.
2. Someone has recently tricked me into going to Wal-Mart, and I didn't want to go, so I went to Sam's Club next door and watched the big TVs instead. Probably some kind of made for High Def show on a continuous loop, like Planet Earth, or something like that.
3. The apocalypse is coming, and I'm stocking up on bottled water and duct tape.

Starbucks Gift Card(s) - I usually have about three of these in my wallet at any given time. I go to Starbucks every week or so, but never think to use any of my gift cards. I always use them once (like the day someone gives it to me), but then it goes to the back of the wallet, and I forget how much money was on it to begin with. I should just go to Starbucks and figure out how much money is on each of these damn things, but I doubt I'll get around to it.

There are some other boring cards in there. Nothing worth mentioning. Here are other things in my wallet:

10-12 blank taxi receipts - I collect these from cab companies when I travel. I always try to pay for taxis with a credit card. If the cabbie gets all pissy and won't take a credit card, I usually say something smartass and then pay with cash. Because of my smartassedness, cabbies in this situation refuse to give me a receipt. That's why I keep all of these blank receipts as backup. I have a strange relationship with cab drivers. This is probably worthy of its own post. 

$26 - I don't like paying cash for anything (please see taxi rant above), but sometimes I have to. Everyone should accept credit cards. 

15 Receipts - This means that I've been traveling for work, and haven't gotten around to submitting my expense reports yet. I usually average about 5 receipts/day on work trips, so I'd say I've got three days worth of receipts here. I should probably submit an expense report tonight as well. That's something productive I can do without leaving my couch.

That's all for tonight. Let me know if you've got fun things in your wallet/purse. Now for that expense report...

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have a $20 gift card to Williams-Sonoma in my wallet. Can you actually buy anything from them for only $20?

Also a fortune cookie fortune that says "Everyone agrees that you are the best."

Nate said...

$20 at WS. Um, no. But you can get 15 marshmallows for $30, so you'd only be out $10. But, you'd be spending money on $2 marshmallows, so I don't recommend it.

Anonymous said...

I'd like to see your student ID sometime...

Amanda said...

My favorite thing? JustOneClubCard: http://www.justoneclubcard.com/

Since every store under the sun has a stupid rewards program, this saves my wallet a lot of extra bulk. Especially for the places that I only visit once or twice a year... you know I'm not going to remember that stupid card.

Laminate that (or put it in a trimmed down name badge if you can't find laminating stuff on your first try, like I did).

Also works for library cards and most cards that have a scanable barcode. Most cash register people look at you kind of like you're a crazy person, but seriously saves wallet space.

Anonymous said...

you should have a "used once" starbucks gift card giveaway lol