Yes, The Long Lady Wallet Works With Saving Cash
“It feels like if the phone wallet is a TV dinner, the Long Lady Wallet has been kind of this gourmet home-cooked meal.” - Nora, a NEVERWORNS reader and LLW-winner
Can a Long Lady Wallet really change your financial outlook? A few months ago, I held a live shopping Gucci bag sale on Substack, and I did a sweepstakes: If someone could guess what term I referred to a Long Lady Wallet as, they would win a pert and slim Tom Ford-era Gucci wallet. Before I could even utter the question, avid Neverworns reader and sale-shopper Nora guessed the term—a LLW—and I shipped her a Long Lady Wallet fashioned from the most supple leather known to man.
I’ve written about the benefits of a Long Lady Wallet before from my own perspective. Since using one, my finances have changed on a daily buying-coffee, getting-dry-cleaning level, and in a more long-term savings way. I don’t leave my credit cards to languish in the back pocket of a subway-ass-grinding pair of dirty jeans. I don’t have crumpled cash flailing around the bottom of my bag. No more gnawed-on passport as an ID. Oh, and I don’t lose laundry tickets anymore! There is something about having this mini file cabinet in my bag that I wield like a sword, which keeps my brain more tight and structured, funneling into a bigger financial perspective. The organization of my LLW translates into how I look at my account overall: Like how I check my wallet for how much cash is in there, I check how much is on my credit card statement weekly. For some reason, when I was exclusively tapping with ApplePay, I never checked anything until I got a raging “amount due” alert in my inbox.
But does the LLW work the same wonders for other people? Nora has had the Long Lady Wallet for almost six months now, and I was curious to see how she was doing. Yes, there are some differences: Nora is 24, and, well, I am not. We are in different places in terms of career and life in general. But it seems that there is a positive uptick in one’s life when there is some semblance of organization, even if it is simply an LLW. I loved hearing what she had to say, including the grossness of a phone wallet and being able to hold something. (Note: The phone wallet is evil, created to further tether us to our phones!) Also, I love how she customized her adult wallet with stickers! Anyways, read it here, and below the paywall, I’ve included some links for you to shop for your own vintage slick ‘n sleek LLW.
PS. Our next Neverworns Live! Shopping Sale, I am unloading my closet and streaming it next Thursday, June 4 at 7:00pm. Paid readers can win their own succulent LLW, which I’ll be giving away.
Nora, 24, lives in Long Island, commutes, and works in New York City
Neverworns: What do you do?
Nora: I just finished up an internship last week. It was doing research on city policy issues and interviewing people. Most recently, I was discussing bureaucratic hurdles that people run into at various nonprofit organizations that are contracted with the city, which was interesting. And data analysis stuff where I was analyzing traffic crash data across the five boroughs and then kind of figuring out where there are heightened crashes and where there is not a ton of infrastructure for safer streets.
NW: What were you using before you got the Long Lady Wallet?
Nora: Actually, the worst-case scenario is what I was relying on. I had this ugly ass Amazon phone wallet, which is sort of the bottom of the barrel in terms of what I could have been using. It was so nasty. It got sticky from the adhesive that was on the back of it, which you were supposed to use to attach the wallet to your phone. The leather was peeling. It was all stretched out. I was afraid that my cards and everything dear to me was going to fall out at any point. I was resting on the convenience of it, particularly in college, where you could put a school ID and credit card and go out into the world. It never felt so good. It was definitely a convenience thing. It feels like if the phone wallet is a TV dinner, the Long Lady Wallet has been kind of this gourmet home-cooked meal.
It requires a little more effort to get your card out or to remember to throw it in your purse in the first place, but there’s this feeling of it being earned and kind of an enriching end product. I’m kind of exercising a sense of control rather than kind of giving it to the chaos of having a disgusting phone wallet.
NW: Do you find yourself watching what you spend?
Nora: I do feel it has made me a bit more cognizant, definitely. When I used to use my phone to tap, for example, I felt like I was kind of forgetting that I made the purchase 30 seconds later. It was very quickly out of my brain because it was just using the phone. It’s kind of nice to put my money where I can see it, literally, and lean into cash more with a physical wallet. That was something with a phone wallet, there was no place to put cash, so I literally never had it as a result of that. Now, it’s kind of nice to be like, “okay, I have multiple forms of payment on me.”
I feel more prepared now that there’s kind of some organization to things. Also, I just really love the feeling of this wallet in particular. It’s nice leather, the Gucci hardware is a G that clips it shut, a metal G. It’s kind of fun to flip it up or to use like the little snap coin purse that’s on the back of it. I like the tactility of that, and I do think that makes me a little more, even if it’s just taking 30 seconds extra to make an exchange, I like that I’m feeling things while I’m doing it. It’s a nice object to have in my hands.
I do think, actually, in a larger sense…it’s not disappearing from my brain the second that I buy something because I have a physical thing holding my money
NW: What was your relationship to cash before the LLW?
Nora: I would say that my relationship with cash is that I traditionally have not really had it on me. Back in middle school, maybe in my Vera Bradley coin purse, I was shoving a couple of bucks in there to buy a candy on the walk home from school. I was in kind of that middle part for a while in college where I was like, “I don’t really need this for anything.”
I think now I’m getting to this point where I’m letting cash back into my life and it’s helpful to have an actual vessel for it, which is what I feel like the Long Lady Wallet achieves. And now, it’s like, okay, I can go into a place in Chinatown and get two dumplings for $2. I can do these kinds of smaller purchases that are fun and reliant on cash, which I never had on me beforehand.
NW: Did you ever lose your IDs pre-LLW?
Nora: One time, actually, my ID did fall out of my floppy ass phone wallet, and I couldn’t go to the club with my friends as a result. This was back in college, and so it’s little things like that. I was just kind of like, “I got such a stupid, stupid way to kind of ruin your night because you don’t have a place to put your shit.” I think it could be cutesy and kind of zany to be like, “Oh, I just have all these coins at the bottom of my tote bag and I have to fish for it.” But at a certain point, I think in particular after graduating college, I’m like, “You know what? I’m going to be a fucking adult about it.” The Long Lady Wallet fell into my lap, sort of, so that felt like a changing point, but it had been this creeping feeling of grossness with the phone wallet that I’ve been feeling for a while.
I think that there’s room for wallets to get the same kind of treatment as bags have recently, where you customize your bag with little charms or knick-knacks that you hang on. I feel that kind of hit a year or two ago, where everyone kind of wanted to put a bunch of shit on their totes and different bags, little charms.
I feel like a wallet can be ripe for that too if you have one that’s kind of substantial and you’re handling it a lot throughout the day. I have little Japanese animal stickers on the inside of mine. I keep a childhood school portrait of my best friend in the back.
I think it’s fun to have a little spot for kind of superfluous things like that. It’s a well-organized wallet, it fits all of my cards, it fits cash, and it has a place for coins. But I like that I can put my fun little stickers on it. It’s kind of a hidden thing, protected inside, or a photo of someone that I love, but they’re not here with me in the city. I think that there’s real estate for a little more cheekiness with wallets. You can get the utility from them, but I think you can also make it into a fun thing. I don’t see that with wallets as much because I think they’re kind of seen as “all business,” but you could put a fun lanyard to the zipper of your wallet and that can be a fun thing.
I see there being an opportunity for that, and I think it just helps to personalize it a little bit more and still keep it fun and useful. Maybe putting your money wrapped in a rubber band could be. It’s a similar spirit to that, but it’s a little more organized and in check, right? So I don’t know, maybe that’s a prediction that I have or something that I want to speak into existence
NW: Drawbacks of the LLW?
Nora: I would say in the beginning, it was just making it a force of habit to bring it places. As someone who was transitioning from a phone wallet, where again, the whole purpose was that you kind of didn’t need to think about it at all. Remembering to actually put it in my bag was important.
Related to that, the only fault is that I feel like I can’t really lean into a tiny purse so much because it’s kind of at least the Long Lady Wallet that I have, I like that it has all this real estate, but also it does not always fit into a small purse.
NW: Has it helped with saving?
Nora: I guess it goes back to my point about feeling like there’s more of this twinge of recognition when I’m making a purchase, having the wallet. I haven’t crunched the numbers, but I feel it has made a dent in the pocket change that I have on me, like where it gives me a little bit more pause. It’s probably not saving me hundreds and hundreds of dollars per month or anything, but I think it’s probably curbing some smaller, more stupid purchases. As a result, that’s probably giving me a little more extra money in my pocket for the day-to-day, which is helpful.
30+ fantastic LLW wallets that will lead you to the road of financial responsibility! Some are under $30, some are from Japan’s Mercari, and some have the most supple, elegant leather.
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