Lost!

I had a real scare last week, when I thought for a full 24 hours that I'd lost my purse.  There were only a couple of possible locations (so I thought) that it could have parted company from my handbag - the office car park, or the leisure centre car park, both pretty popular of an evening for young people hanging around out of sight of their parents and doing whatever it is teenagers get up to these days. Twerking, probably.

Fortunately for my sanity, I keep my bank cards separate to my "cash" purse, so I didn't have to go through all the hassle of cancelling them all, and trying desperately to find the phone number for the credit card I almost never use.  But even so, I started to make a list of the things in my purse that I would have to try and replace, what that was going to set me back, and what I'd more likely lost to the great dust pile in the sky.

The offending purse

• My driving license.  £20 to replace
• Various loyalty cards, with about £40 to spend on them - coffee shops, etc
• Gift cards to various stores, with about £20 on them
• Cash - about £30
• An unscratched lottery ticket - face value £1, could be worth £0, or £25,000 (was actually £0)
• La Squeak's nursery school photo
• Stamps, worth about £6
• Money off vouchers - totalling about £25
• The purse itself £2.50 from a charity shop

I read these studies in the papers about the value of the things we carry around in our handbags, and shake my head - my phone is rubbish, I've rarely got much in the way of spending cash (that day was an exception!), and I try to leave the shiny electronics at home most of the time.  But writing that list made me stop & think!  How much is in my purse that I don't even realise?

Are you the same?  Is there a small fortune scattered across your loyalty card collection, and tucked in between the receipts for a twix & can of fanta?  Or are you like the Queen and never carry cash?

(Oh, and if you're interested, it turns out that my purse wasn't actually lost after all, it was jut enjoying a short holiday in the cupboard under the stairs.)