He did not learn his lesson. Two weeks later he did the same thing except instead of stack of change, he lost his wallet which had $180 in it! Now he is trained not to be so forgetful!

I grew up in the big city, so all this is second nature. But we moved to a smaller city a few years ago. IT continues to amaze me the e-mails and friends we get from neighbors about how you shouldn’t leave your purse unattended in the front seat of your car for 5 minutes. OR all day. (Duh??)

We don’t leave garage door openers in our cars parked in the driveway, either.

A lot of women have been getting their purses snatched from their shopping carts and such. Keep your purse close! & definitely only carry what you NEED – just in case!

The whole reason I have a Citibank credit card is ’cause they offer a thing called a virtual card number when you’re shopping on line. You can set a $ limit on this virtual card, it’s not your normal card number (the only place it’s tied to your card number is on their computers), you can set an expiration date, you can cancel the virtual card easily on-line and the virtual number is only good at the site you use it on, so that, even if someone “grabs” the number on say Amazon, they can’t use it on Neiman Marcus or Land’s End. I do a lot of my purchasing on-line, so I appreciate these safety features… particularly considering that someone did steal my card number when I called in a catalog purchase one time! Now, even if I call in a purchase, I “get” a virtual number and use it on the phone.

I also check my credit cards on-line about once a week to make sure unauthorized purchases aren’t showing up.

When I drop my car off for servicing, I have a thingie on my keyring to easily remove my housekeys. Long ago there was a scam going on where people were copying house keys and getting your address from service records and… well, you can guess the rest!

Being single, for my on-line business I have a separate phone number and a p.o. box. I in no way want people to have my home address, particularly as I’m a sculptor/carver and may occasionally be posting shows that I’m attending on my site — talk about an open invitation to dishonest people! I also have an arrangement with my neighbors, whenever I do happen to leave town for a day or two.

I enjoy traveling by myself. As an added safety measure, I have an arrangement with a friend (who’s also my attorney and holds my medical power of attorney) that I tell him when I’ll be gone, the route I’m taking and when I’m due back. As soon as I return, I email or call him. If he doesn’t hear from me, his instructions are to start the search! If it’s a particularly long, driving trip, we also set specific days when I check in with him along the way. There’s a part of me that hates this, but there’s also a part of me that figures it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Guess that’s about it for what I can think of right now.