Mind your wallet

Wall of Juice, originally uploaded by Zesmerelda.

My wallet was stolen today. I think it fell out of an unzipped pocket, but who knows? It could've been lifted.

Anyway, my bank knew about it before I did. Three unusual transactions on my debit card were enough to trigger a call -- two at Jewel Osco and one at Red Box DVD. It wasn't even $200 worth of stuff, but they knew I never used that card for anything other than withdrawing cash. It's creepy to think my buying patterns are predictable enough to trigger a fraud alert off of such little data. It's almost enough to make me go cashless. On the other hand, cards are easily replaced. That $10 in my wallet? Gone.

I'm doing fine otherwise. I knew what was in my wallet and had made copies of all account numbers and my driver's license. The bank canceled all my plastic & called the three credit reporting agencies for me (though, I will check that tomorrow). I'll have fresh cards by the weekend, but if I don't that's fine. I had a back-up credit card at home that never traveled with me.

The only sticky point at this point is my driver's license. The DMV web site says to report it to local police & the Chicago PD says they don't file stolen DL reports. I don't know what's up with that, but I'll figure it out when I go by the DMV tomorrow.

The upshot? I had a plan in place to handle losing my wallet and that plan worked better than expected. No drama.

The next plan I need to work out? What to do if my laptop gets stolen. THAT would be really tragic.