“The best way to double your money is to fold it in half and put it in your back pocket”

–  Will Rogers

This is excellent advice. However, my wallet is sitting out in front of me on my desk because my chiropractor told me it’s throwing my back out.  Here’s what’s happening: Sitting on my not-so thick wallet is not only twisting my spine but it’s also compressing a large nerve that extends through the buttock and down my left leg.  Ouch!

You see, my not-so thick wallet has gotten too thick with membership cards, business cards, healthcare cards, credit cards, debit cards, access cards, and even some cash once a while.  I clean it out every week but it’s still too thick.

At the chiropractor, I open my wallet looking for my healthcare membership card and my HSA (Health savings account) debit card to pay my chiropractor to solve the problem. They also need to make a photocopy of each of said cards and my driver’s license – for the third time.

There are quite a few problems with men’s and women’s wallets.

• The wallets are designed to hold a lot of stuff, inefficiently, making them thick and bulky. (see some new options below)
• For men, we spend too much time sitting on them throwing out our backs and  compressing large nerves.
• For women, (based on a lifetime of observation in retail checkout lines lines and also being married)  Women spend too much time rooting for their wallet through large purses with entirely too much stuff in them. Once the wallets are found in the large purse, the rooting begins again in the large wallet.
• This problem increases for both sexes with age. Most young guys and gals tend to travel lighter. Mature adults and professionals of some sort seem to accumulate all kinds of crap in their wallets.
• Old men and old ladies are off the charts keeping entire decades of information in their wallets. For a while, my mom had my birth certificate in her wallet, 20 years after I was living on my own.
• If you lose said monster wallet, your whole month is pretty much messed up. Credit could be damaged, shit goes wrong.  Yep, you forgot about that folded up check you had in there.
• Speaking of losing wallets, if you travel frequently you will eventually be pickpocketed if you keep your wallet in your back pocket or in a purse. Best to carry something in your front pocket. In parts of Europe and South America pickpocketing has been elevated to an art.

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