If You Lost Your Wallet...

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Shair
Major:
Status: Editor

Shair - studies politics, believes in people, likes horse-riding and wants to visit space station.

If You Lost Your Wallet...
Shairbek Juraev

Losing wallet is not good idea at all. Usually you have a bunch of cards: debit/credit card, student ID, medical insurance card, social security card, business cards, etc. Try not to carry all of them with you, only those that you use on the regular basis. Also, don't keep very much cash - it is less probable that you'll get it back if you lose your wallet. Worst-case scenario is if you keep everything and your wallet is lost.
First, do not panic. Too much fear will make your English not very understandable when you need to explain your situation to people. Try to find people who could help you out. If you lost your wallet in some public building, go to "lost-and-found" service. Report your case, describe what you lost and leave your name and address. Then, just try to go to places you had been in case you just left it somewhere. In most of the cases you'll find it yourself, or in "lost and found" office. Once my friend left his photo camera in Wall mart, and after 10 minutes of hectic search, he found it at the "lost-found" desk.
You can lose your wallet somewhere out of building. It can happen in an autobus as it happened to me. I left my wallet in Orlando city bus in 3 hours prior to my departure from that city. As I found out loss in 10 minutes after I got off from the bus, I called to Orlando downtown bus station and reported the case. As there are many buses in Orlando, and I did not remember exact number of that bus, I just told the number of schedule, the place and the time of loss.
Remember: wherever you lose your wallet/money, report it to people in charge.
The second immediate thing to do is to take care of your money. If you had your debit/credit card lost, call your bank and close your account temporarily until you find your card. Usually banks have toll-free telephone numbers. If you do not remember, you can find that number on the credit/debit card of your friend if he has an account in the same bank. If you have a chance, just go to telephone book, or Internet to find out for sure. After you close your account, do not worry about money in your debit card.
Then you just wait/search. If you find - that is excellent. But it may happen that you would not find at all, as I did not get my wallet from Orlando. Some bad guys might find it before good guys, and you may have no chance to find your lost item.
Anyway, do not get down. For a little charge (in my case - $5) you can get a new debit card. You can get a new student id, though you'll need to pay a bit more. It may be a good idea to change your picture, as the fist card would have a picture of yours right after arrival, and you may look too slim and gloomy there;).
If you lost your card with social security number, go to international programs office, they should have a schedule of Social Security Administration visit hours in your town/university. Take a new Social Security form, fill it out and turn it to Social Security Administration worker. Cash and business cards are things that cannot be recreated; you just need to forget about them, and get new ones. Last, of course, you need to buy a new wallet and be more careful.
What was written here does not apply to the case when your money/wallet was effectively stolen. You definitely need to contact police in that case, but still, the rest of the process is the same.

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