What's in your wallet?

A cashless society? Not quite, but a look inside local shoppers' wallets suggests we could be headed there

Sandee Resnick has so many cards to keep up with, she carries two wallets.

One, a zippered pouch, has an external slot for easy access to her two debit cards, with a few folded bills and a dozen credit cards inside. The second, a more conventional style, holds important cards she doesn't often need.

The modern American wallet is stuffed with bank cards, credit cards, grocery store and gift cards. Receipts are often more common than $20 bills, and personal touches are practically nonexistent.

It's no secret that we're slowly becoming a cashless society. Experts bemoan our rising debt levels as buying on credit becomes easier. Retailers complain about the service fees that cut into their profits as we charge smaller and smaller amounts on debit cards.

And we can use credit and debit cards just about anywhere these days -- even at Waffle House, which announced in February it would accept credit cards after 50 years of being a cash-only business.

Meanwhile, we are leading increasingly digital lives. Photos of loved ones are stored online or carried on portable devices. Kodak blames the death of traditional photography as it continues to slash its payroll.

Credit card giant Capital One asks: What's in your wallet? We decided to borrow the tag line and survey shoppers at a local mall. We wanted to see how much of this cultural shift is true, and how much is hype.

Sure enough, we found few photos and lots of plastic.

Out of 10 shoppers, most still carry cash, but not much.

Seven had $30 or less in their wallets, and four were carrying less than $20.

Just two out of 10 wallets held photos.

Gustavo Gonzalez once carried pictures of his wife and daughters. Now he's afraid for their safety on his frequent business trips to Latin America. If he were kidnapped, he said, his captors would threaten the family members shown in his wallet.

"I used to do it a few years ago," said Gonzalez, 45, a Mexican citizen who lives in Morrisville. "I should put them back."

Gonzalez's wallet showed just how much personal information you can learn from an inventory. It revealed a concert program and ticket stub, clothing sizes for his wife and daughters, associates' business cards and contact information, and a promotional flier from Wendy's.

The consumers we surveyed all had at least one debit or credit card. Most had both. Two had enough credit cards to share with several of their closest friends.

Resnick, 56, may carry a dozen payment cards, but she says she uses only three credit cards, plus two charge cards specific to stores such as J.C. Penney. She used to make sure she had cash, but the convenience of plastic has gradually changed her habits.

"Since I use a debit card all the time, I could run around with $3 in my wallet for weeks and not notice," said Resnick, an accountability specialist for the state Division of Mental Health.

Some wallets were chock-full of membership and loyalty cards promising free food or discounts.

Frank Agius has carried two credit cards and a decent sum of cash ($87 on the day we caught him) for ages, but his tally of membership and loyalty cards has grown during the past five years. Agius, 46, is a computer programmer for Sirit, a Canadian wireless technology company with an office in Durham. He carries cards for stores such as BJ's Wholesale Club and REI.

Although wallets hold more cards than cash nowadays, the world is hardly paperless. Now the bill compartment is a handy place to store all the receipts generated by frequent charging.

Thin is in

Besides the occasional ticket stub, most wallets lacked the clutter of most of our daily lives. Wallet makers have noticed the change.