Remember how our parents always told us not to keep all\nour money in one place. Whenever I went on school trips, my mother asked me to\nkeep some money in trousers, some in my bag, and some even in my pencil box!\nThough I only used the money available in my pocket to buy a cola or two, I\nalways had the peace of mind that in case of an emergency or a theft I had a\nbackup in my pencil box! My expenses increased as graduation began and I\nshifted to a hostel. But, I still follow my parents\u2019 advice of keeping my money\nin different places remained the same. I carried a wallet, which had enough\nmoney to buy a burger from the canteen. For everything else, I kept few hundred\nrupee notes in my red, yellow and green shirts at the top right drawer of my\ncupboard in my room, few 50 rupee notes in the old music CDs that no one was\ninterested in listening to, and some more money for extreme conditions inside\nmy table lamp!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Times changed and I got a job that required frequent travel. Being a travel enthusiast I didn\u2019t blink once before accepting the offer though my parents were a little worried about my well-being. I explained the benefits of my occupation to them and I like to believe that I did a decent job in calming them down. But pretty early in my career, I got a reality check on my age-old habit of keeping cash at various places. I had a lunch meeting with a client. The meeting went well, the food was delicious but when it came to paying the cheque, I realised that the jacket I wore was different from the one in which I had stocked some cash. Thankfully my colleague paid for the lunch and we were saved from embarrassment in front of our client. It struck me that this can happen in future as well. I can\u2019t be carrying my backpack everywhere and hence I need to have sufficient money in my wallet every time. But I wasn\u2019t sure how much was sufficient. Plus, I was never a big fan of thick wallets for two good reasons-one, let\u2019s be honest, it\u2019s more of a show-off and two, if it gets stolen, there is no back-up! <\/p>\n\n\n\n