I Use This Instead of a Travel Wallet

When I was preparing to leave my studio apartment lease for a few months of travel last year, I bought a travel wallet. This one to be exact:

I was excited about the purchase. I was going to be organized. I’d have all my important travel day items in tidily in one place – a pen for customs and immigration forms, my passport, a card or two, my plane ticket, and cash.* Eventually, I’d invest in a nicer leather or “cuter” travel wallet.

But, it turns out, a travel wallet, just didn’t work for me. When navigating airports and transportation alone, it wasn’t fast enough. I had to pull it out, unsnap it, wiggle out the item (like passport or boarding pass) I needed, hand the item over, and then try to wiggle the item back in while doing something else like going through some type of checkpoint, boarding a plane, or stepping out of a vehicle.  More than once, I ended up getting frazzled and shoving whatever item I had out anywhere in my bag, defeating the whole purpose of the travel wallet.

The other problem I encountered with the travel wallet was it just wasn’t spacious enough for international travel. In the United States, it’s easy to get by with something as small as a cellphone “wallet” like this that holds a few cards and an ID.

But when traveling internationally, particularly in the not-so-first-world places I love, you often need to carry currency, which gets bulky fast. With cash in it, my travel wallet quickly became difficult to button. With even a few days receipts on top of that, and it just didn’t work.

For these reasons, I didn’t last with the travel wallet long. While in Bangkok, my first international stop, I had abandoned it. I opted instead to use this cheap red mini make-up bag that I already had with me as a “wallet” for the rest of my travels.

It was quick and easy to pull it out, retrieve what I needed, and shove items back into it quickly. I could move it from one bag to another. The zipper helped ensure that nothing fell-out of the “wallet” while it was in a bag – nothing worse than that panicked feeling. It was big enough to easily store stacks of cash (which really did not equate to a lot of money in USD), change, receipts, identification and cards as needed, travel passes, and even a chap stick. It wasn’t as long as the travel wallet which was only an issue for boarding passes, which I just folded to fit.

The silly little make-up bag worked so well that I’ve been using it as a wallet ever since, much to my sister’s dismay. And she’s right, it wouldn’t hurt to invest in a real wallet for when I’m not traveling.

Although there’s still a sentimental attachment to my make-up bag, I recently upgraded to this awesome little accessory bag for my travel bag:

The art on it was created by my friend, Natashya, who in addition to her  full-time  Marketing Director role at Web.com is a painter.  She’s started putting her art on products like the accessory bag and yoga pants!   Learn more about her art and products at Boldcityart.com.

An added bonus of the new bags is it is wider so will more easily fit long tickets.  Oh, and to be sure, I took a bunch of stuff that I might have with me when traveling – including real receipts I kept from my solo Asia travels – and filled the bag.  All of the stuff below is in it in the beach picture above:For those with security concerns about using a basic zip-up bag, budget friendly RFID sleeve for cards can be purchased off Amazon:

(Ok, you probably don’t need 15 unless you want to make it rain RFID sleeves but I liked that they were colorful.)

There are certainly other options including different travel wallet styles and what works best depends on an individual’s travel and organizational style as well as the type of trip. I’d love to hear about what other people are using – including whether you have a travel wallet that you DO love.

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