Transcripts

Mike Carruthers:
If your wallet was lost or stolen, the first question you'd ask yourself is…

Gerry Printz:
"What was in my wallet?" And when I do work with people and I ask them that question, most of the time they don't even know what was in that wallet - and if you don't know, how do you know who to call?

Gerry Printz, CEO of 2020 Innovations, says you should keep an inventory of what's in your wallet in a safe so you'll know who to call in the event it gets stolen. And to minimize the potential trouble, there are some things you should never carry in your wallet. For example…

Social security card - there's absolutely no reason to carry that card in your wallet and I don't know what the percentage is, but it's very high of people who do; excess credit cards; little cheat sheets with different ATM pin numbers on it - things of that nature.

And Gerry says you should NEVER give out your social security number unless someone can convince you it's absolutely necessary - and it usually isn't absolutely necessary.

Sending my daughter off to camp and on the camp form they want her social security number - I don't fill it in, they've never asked me for it after ten years. I think it's just habit that they have it on there. It's people just mindlessly putting the information down when asked or telling someone when asked when there's absolutely no reason to do that.

Gerry has a free service where you can inventory the contents of your wallet and other valuables - it's on his website which you can link to from ours: somethingyoushouldknow.net - I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.