I have always, always kept my wallet in the front, right hand pocket of my pants (I am male). It seems to me to be simply the most logical place: it is typically the biggest pocket, allowing the wallet to slide down a bit more, leaving less chance that it will be pick-pocketed. When you’re in a crowded room or a dangerous place where you think you might be robbed, all you have to do is casually stick your hand in your pocket and hold on to your wallet, and you know it won’t be stolen. When you sit down you don’t have to sit on your wallet.
Yet my dad and brothers insist that the back pocket is the proper place to put your wallet – they have no reason but tradition, but the drawbacks seem obvious. It’s uncomfortable to have to sit on your wallet. If you want to make sure your wallet is safe, you can’t walk down the street with your hand casually on your butt. It’s typically a smaller pocket, making the wallet stick out more, leaving it prey to thieves (or to falling out). Still, my dad and brothers insist that only women put their wallets in their front pockets.
So what’s the proper place? Any benefit to the back pocket that I’m missing?
I keep mine in the same place, front right. I started doing that after my pocket was picked 10 years ago, as a matter of fact, and for that very reason.
Home area – back right, because it’s never crowded enough for me to worry about pickpocketing. My front right pocket’s for my keys, and it gets awful crowded in there if I shove the wallet in.
Vacation – front right, if I carry it at all. I usually just pull the card holder out of the wallet and carry that. It holds my license and 2 credit cards, and I’ll leave the rest in the hotel room. Still put the keys in the front right pocket, if I’m carrying them.
Rear Right. I dont like having to dig for it, and the deeper front pocket is more of a pain in the ass to get it out. If I’m working, then I have pockets on the lower part of my shirt, and that’s where I keep it at work.
Jacket, inside pocket.
Since I wear a jacket probably 350 days out of the year, and almost all of my jackets have inside pockets, this strikes me as the perfect solution. Traditional and keeps the wallet safe.
Barring that, I keep my wallet in a front pocket (either), because the back pocket is for the pocketknife. The exception is for jeans, because 501s have large back pockets that are still snug enough that I have to work the wallet out; I don’t think a pickpocket can get it from there without sending me into a twitchy violent fit.
Also right front. Left front for keys and change. Back pockets are for paper items for temporary storage like receipts, gum wrappers, movie ticket stubs, $ bills (that I get handed when I don’t particularly feel like pulling out my wallet to store them properly) or any number of flat things I may find myself in possession of.
I kept it in the left rear for years, until I started developing lower back pain. The massage therapist at the gym noticed that I seemed to be standing kind of lop-sided, with my left side above my right, and I realised that it was probably from sitting for so many years with my left buttcheek half an inch higher than my right.
I switched to the front pocket and my back pain has all but disappeared.
Front left but my wallet is just a card holder, I carry my cash in my right pocket. Largely influenced by two things - losing my wallet with every penny I had in the world one Christmas and working at the races where the racecourse detectives stressed that you should never carry your wallet in a back pocket.
Unless I’m driving I don’t carry my wallet. Folding money goes in a front pocket, change in the other. When I need the wallet for the ID’s and cards in it, I carry it in my shirt pocket or jacket pocket.
The only thing I carry in a back pocket is a comb.
The last time I used a back pocket for a wallet was probably college days or maybe a few years after that. Long ago. I decided if somebody was going to pick my pocket they would have to work on the front one(s). Not that a good pickpocket couldn’t do that, but it ought to be a little more obvious.
Besides, I didn’t like the way that wallet lump looked on other guys. Especially the ones that had a chain attached to the wallet.
Front; it changes depending on which hand I pick up my wallet with. Keys, wallet, phone, handkerchief all go into front pockets. Back is just too uncomfortable to sit on, or to bend over with.
I am amazed to see all the front-pocket wallet-wearers. I make it a point to check out the rear end of almost everybody I meet and I don’t think I’ve ever seen you people!
Just out of curiosity I tried it, and it’s very uncomfortablel to sit down with my wallet in the front pocket because that’s where the crease between my thigh and abdomen happens.
What most people miss out on is that pick-pockets don’t only gor the backpocket. If they catch a wallet in either backpocket, that’ll be their first goal. Their second goal is to examine both right back pocket and right front pocket simultaneously. If they have time after that, they check both left back and left front pocket simultaneously.
Hence, the safest spot of the four pockets is front left.
Which is where I tend to keep mine, if I don’t have it in my jacket or hidden inside my shoulder bag.
Depends on what pants I’m wearing. If I’m wearing slacks or a suit it usually goes in the front left pocket. I’m not sure why left instead of right, unless it’s the fact that I hold the wallet with my left hand and reach into it with my right hand. I’d say that either pocket on the left side the most logical place to carry it for right handed people. I don’t keep it in the back pocket because it eventually will cause a tiny hole to appear at the edge of the pocket.
If I’m wearing jeans I use the left rear pocket; it’s really where I prefer to keep it. I don’t have to go around with my hand “casually on my butt” to know it’s safe because I can always feel that it’s there.