Is it secret? Is it safe?

A couple of weeks ago I lost my wallet. Misplaced it, I guess, and whoever picked it up in the store thought he or she needed it more than I did, so I had to cancel my credit cards, request duplicates of them and all my other stuff, and rethink my budget for the month.

Then last week, my laptop gave up the ghost, and I had to take it to my son-in-law (who does that sort of thing) to breath new life into it.

Soooo -- easy, right?

Well, yeah, and no.

Couple of tips I knew, but didn't follow, and are now firmly fixed in my conscious thought.

1) COPY everything in your wallet! Take your credit cards, your medical, insurance, SS, licenses, and put them on a sheet of paper in your copier. Copy both sides of them! Then keep the copies in a safe place. Review them occasionally, updating them as necessary. Then you'll KNOW what was in there, especially when it comes to your credit and debit cards.

2) KEEP a list of passwords, IDs, program keys, etcetera, so that you can get back up and running with fewer calls to "the help desk" !!

List ended for now, I gotta get back to resetting passwords and recovering my access to some of the stuff that's still missing.