A minimalist wallet: yey or nay?

in #hive-1948483 months ago

Heeeyho Readers! What's in your pocket, minimalists?


During my 20s, before knowing about the whole minimalist trend, I used to carry one of those regular men's leather wallets. As a rule of thumb, the more space we got, the more we want to fill said space. Consequently, my wallet was filled with everything (but money). Driver's license, ID, health plan card, bank card, business card, and a bunch of other crap.

One night, at a party, while heavily slightly drunk, that wallet disappeared from my back-pocket. The result of losing every-single-document scaled to a rather bizarre situation: I'd lost my money and bank card, so I needed to cash out some fiat with my ID at the counter, but I'd lost the ID too. To make a new ID, I needed cash (that I couldn't cash out). I suddenly found myself in a doomed loop.

I've been going out with nothing but a bank card, some fiat and ID ever since. All thrown into my pocket — like a savage man. Also, a single account from one of these "digital" banks replaced the other two, which makes like a lot easier. Simplifying what I carry solved future hassles. Fast forward to today.

Tinkering with leather has got me busy lately, so I decided to combine business with pleasure and build myself a minimalist leather wallet to keep things organized. That got me thinking...

How do other minimalists organize their pockets?

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Minimalist wallet


Design idea comes from Corter Leather on Youtube. He creates awesome leather crafts, though I prefer to avoid most of his videos to keep my own reality in check. You know? Starting off simple is the best way to align expectation to reality. With the abundance of information and tutorials available, it's quite easy for us to bite off more than we can chew, often resulting is huge frustrations.

Anyways. This is not a leather craft DIY post. One could think this post is an ingenious way to show-off this super sexy hand-made wallet. It is. Not! What I'm indeed curious about is other people's organization. Here's mine.

  • One pocket for the phone
  • One pocket for wallet (containing bank card, fiat money and ID) + keys

That's that.

Never before have I felt the need for carrying a pocket-knife or a 'pen-styled' flashlight like other survivalists/minimalists/ on internet do. (Do they even?). Sure, bringing a Swiss Army Knife sounds cool, although more often than ever it's just extra weight pulling my trousers down.

Back to showing off my new super delicious wallet...

DSC_0282.jpg

Ultra compact


The wallet is essentially made of two side slip pockets: one to slide in credit cards and the other to shove in a few bank notes. I'm one of those old-fashioned folks who still uses bank notes — still the best way to spend money without the government knowing xD.

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Keeping it simple


Whether I'll continue to use this wallet as my EDC or sell it is a mystery. Having the once scattered notes and card and whatnots organized is great. Perhaps the lack of more space/slots will prevent me from accumulating more never-used cards in there. We'll see.

Now, finally...

Will you please talk about your pocket?? I wanna know other savages who go out with nothing but keys and money. I know some ultra-wild ppl who don't even take keys with them.

Curious to know.

Peace.


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~Love ya all,


Disclaimer: The author of this post is a convict broke backpacker, who has travelled more than 10.000 km hitchhiking and more than 5.000 km cycling. Following him may cause severe problems of wanderlust and inquietud. You've been warned.


I'm Arthur. I blog about Adventure Stories, Brazil, Travel, Camping, & Life Experiences.

Follow me to stay tuned for more craziness and tips.

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I tried to switch to minimalist wallets a couple of years ago, but it didn't work for me.
I always carry two bank cards with me because I have two different accounts. In addition, I carry two personal identification cards; in dictatorial Serbia, they will very likely check you late at night for no reason at all. A driver's license is not enough for them, so in addition to it, I also carry an ID card. In addition, I also need health insurance cards - two more (state and private). Fortunately, I keep my car insurance cards and auto card in my car, which many people consider unsafe due to potential burglaries.
Anyway, those are already six must-have cards that I always carry with me. When I go to the office, I also need a card to enter the building... Seven cards.
Plus cash.
Plus a couple of coins that I always have, mostly to get a shopping cart.
In the end, I went back to the classic smaller wallet that I always keep deep in the front pocket of my pants. I am not saying that it is not possible to steal it there, but it is much more difficult and fortunately it has not happened so far.

I can't recall the last time I was checked for ID.. and now in Australia they're trialling digital licences so I won't even need to have my licence in my phone!

Yes, that would be normal. When I'm traveling in Europe, I usually only carry one bank card, and I have all the other documents, including my passport, as photos on my phone, and I've never had the slightest problem. Unfortunately, in Serbia I have to have physical cards with me for some unknown reason 🤷‍♂🤣

That's how my wallet used to look like. I still have two cards from crypto banks, but those stay at home since I never use them. Thankfully, in Brazil our driver's licence serves as ID (our id number is in there). Our Government is creating a new ID system that concentrates all those annoying numbers in one single document (already available via app). As much as I dislike anything governmental, especially online, it's better than carrying two or three different documents.

I went with a minimalist leather wallet almost a decade ago now, and haven't looked back since! It contains exactly what I need, nothing more, and the best part about it is that most importantly, it fits in my front pocket where it belongs.

Besides less chance of it getting stolen out of my pocket while I'm walking around, I can't recommend enough putting your wallet in your front pocket. Anything we do to put things in our back pocket besides a slip of paper or something, tilts our pelvis by very small amounts when we are sitting down. This imbalance will lead to later complications and pains in life.

Any man I see who sits on his wallet, I tell him about this because this happened to me! My wallet messed up the alignment of my pelvis and lower back and ended up causing me a decent amount of pain but I thankfully adjusted it back and haven't had issues in many years.

Just food for thought man! :D

On point! The wallet syndrome is real. I have quite a lot of imbalances while cycling because of a tilted pelvis -- wallet on my right pocket and years of sitting with legs crossed may have helped. Left piriformis is messes up, shorter leg, shorter hamstring and if I don't stretch regularly, it sparkles my cyatic a little bit.

The good thing about minimalist wallets is that they are compact, ultra thin and won't weight on our trousers haha

Never cross your legs!!!!

Fuck me! I read this while having my legs crossed (uncrossed now). No joke.

It's a hard habit to break!

That's nice. Usually, I carry a leather wallet with two pockets, too. One for the bank cards and the other is for the cash. The, I also carry one purse for the coins which I often use to pay for fares when commuting. But other times, when I prefer to travel very lightly, I would just slip some cash inside my phone case, then some coins on my pockets. That so, I'll be only carrying my phone. If I run out of cash, I have a backup on my e-wallets and will pay using QR codes.

The phone case trick is great. I do that when out cycling: id and cash shoved in there. Problem is that we lose our phone everything goes with it xDD

I'm not really a minimalist. I carry an old-school wallet, a Leatherman multi-tool, and a flashlight. I use them regularly enough to find it worthwhile.

I always find it curious when I see EDC photos with pocket-knives and flashlights. I could justify a knife, but a flashlight. Whyyyyyyy?

by the way, i need to add a leatherman to my collection

  1. It gets dark here where I live.
  2. Sometimes I need a more focused, poweful beam than my phone offers.
  3. A flashlight can serve as non-lethal self-defense, both to disorient and as a striking implement. Or it can be held in one hand whilst the EDC pistol is in the other.

Makes sense. And now we got to the nice part of your not-before-mentioned edc piece, the pistol. 🤣

We can't have those things here =/

As an Aussie, the whole carrying a pistol thing is fkn weird shit

Of course you can. You just get in more trouble if anyone finds out.

I like simple designs. I bought the wallet I'm using now 10 years ago and I still use it. It's not as simple as yours, but it's not too complicated either. It has become a classic for me. Maybe my new wallet will be the same.

Is it leather? I can only imagine how cool it must look now after 10 years. Leather wallets get more awesomr as they age, I guess

No it's not leather unfortunately 😅

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Absolutely gorgeous. I basically take my phone and that's it. Maybe a tenner if I have it. Australia has adopted cashless so bad and I don't care either way tbh. I don't want completely cashless but it pisses me off when I try to buy something off someone on Facebook and I have to try to find a bank because they don't trust PAYID coz they think its a scam.

I do have two little bags for longer ventures which I might explain in a post all of their own. But I'm mainly above the keys in my bra and chuck the phone in my pocket kinda girl.

Knowing your house and where you live, I bet you could leave without keys too. Just close the door and voila xD

We did yesterday. Locked ourselves out of the house. Lucky one of the locks was dodgy. I blame the tradesman.

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Yes to a minimalist wallet! This is the wallet that I use and I only got a purse just because I wanted to. Even then, I still love this card wallet since everything around here is tap and swipe 🤣

Looks cool! I can't wait for our government to start issuing the new IDs that has the same size of a bank card -- it's gonna make wallet organization soooooooo much easier. Current ID is "out of proportion"