After our inaugural Financial Contingency Plan series post, How to Recover From a Lost Wallet, a lot of you suggested I write an addendum to the post to cover the case where you lose your wallet while traveling. Whenever you’re traveling, one of the biggest headaches you can run into, besides an airline losing your luggage, is losing your wallet or having it stolen. It’s happens more than you like and while we loathe to think about it, a little pre-planning can make your life a lot easier later on.

The first step is to do everything I suggested in the first post and then, when you travel, make these arrangements.

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The AT&T Universal Savings and Rewards Card was my very first credit card. I applied for it in my first week on campus at Carnegie Mellon University because I was offered a t-shirt, not because I was some credit savant building my credit history and carving out a good credit score.

One of the great benefits of the card was some free long distance minutes, which was crucial back in the days when I didn’t have a cell phone and had to call home with my dorm room phone. Nowadays, the benefits of owning the card have vastly improved, with a nice $50 statement credit after you make a mere $50 in purchases within 3 months and rewards points you can spend in the ThankYou Rewards Network.
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How old are you? Unless you’re under the age of 20 or 25, chances are you will not change.

I don’t care how much willpower you think you have, the vast majority of people will not change their habits once they’ve become an adult. This is why the government created rules to prevent cigarette companies from marketing to minors (Joe the Camel?).

In fact, your only chance of changing usually comes on the heels of a very “shocking” event. How many stories have you heard of people getting their finances on track because their brother’s house was foreclosed? How many people lose weight because their doctor warns of impending health problems? While I don’t wish a “shocking” event onto anyone, sometimes we all need one to get us back on course!

In the absence of a shock, what can you do to help your finances? Don’t try wholesale changes to yourself or the way you do things, change your financial “system” so that it works better with You. Below are a few ideas to help you do this.

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Reader Dan told me a story of his friend who was considering settling an outstanding credit card debt but wasn’t sure of the credit score implications:
(Dan): my friend owes like $1100 on a credit card, and he had the balance for like two years and didn’t pay a dime, because he felt he was being taken advantage of
(Dan): well, he went to lease a car last weekend and found out the importance of credit
(Dan): he had bad credit and his new wife basically had none
(Dan): I told him step one would be to clear his balance
(Dan): he called just now, and he mentioned (in IM) something about them offering to settle for like, $700?
(Dan): does settling affect your credit score?

There are a few things going on here at once but in general, settling a debt will improve your credit score. It sounds counter-intuitive but it’ll make sense in a few sentences.

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I’ve been fortunate never to have fallen down the hole of credit card debt. For those that have, it’s a very difficult situation since lenders, of all types, make more money the longer you’re in debt. Credit card debt is especially dangerous because it’s so easy to accumulate and the interest rates are so high. Consider the hoops you need to jump through for a mortgage, which is backed by an actual home, and the requirements of a credit card seem almost comical.

When experts recommend debtors go cash only, I think it’s prudent advice. I think it’s important to recognize your weaknesses and only do things that improve your life. If you can’t use a credit card without falling into debt and paying double digit interest rates, don’t use them.
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If you’ve prepared for losing your wallet, recovering from losing just one credit card is actually quite simple. What’s not as simple is discovering when you’ve actually lost a single card. In our current age of electronic commerce, it’s very easy to “lose” your credit card without actually losing the card. Card skimmers can steal your credit card’s data without you ever knowing it. Ecommerce companies, with lax data security, can experience data breaches that result in your credit card data being stolen.

While credit card companies are becoming very savvy in detecting fraud, as they are on the hook for most of it, they can’t catch everything.

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In this inaugural post to the Financial Contingency Plan series, I want to discuss one of the most common financial disasters – losing your wallet. Whether you carry a money clip, an actual wallet, or an entire purse, losing it is one of the most demoralizing financial events that can happen to a person. Your wallet is a compartmentalization of your financial identity and contains your driver’s license, your cash, any credit and debit cards, your photos, insurance information, and other financial tidbits.

This is what you need to do to prepare for and recover from a lost wallet.

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In the last year, literature in personal finance focused a lot on financial defense like canceling a credit card. There was a lot of talk about credit, credit reports, and your credit score because it’s one of the cornerstones of the modern financial life, whether you like it or not. During that time, many card issuers started canceling cards, reducing credit limits, and otherwise reducing their overall financial risk. Rampant foreclosures and sinking home prices, issuers were scared and started cutting people based on where they shopped!

Now that the economy has recovered, many people don’t want to be in the position they were a year ago – feeling like the card issuers held them and their credit score hostage. The easiest way to do this is to reduce how much credit you use and the quickest way to do that is to cancel credit cards.

How do you cancel a credit card without significantly hurting your credit score?

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