My mother-in-law, bless her, treats her handbag less like a financial lifeline and more like a migratory bird she releases into the wild wherever she happens to be standing. The supermarket shelf. The checkout counter. A Christmas market stall in Edinburgh – in December, in the dark, surrounded by strangers and mulled wine – where it sat unattended, fat with £200 in cash, like some kind of festive offering to the gods of petty crime. By some minor miracle it was handed in. Every penny intact. She laughed. I did not laugh.

Because here’s the thing: most of the time, you are not that lucky. Most of the time, the purse does not come back. And if it does come back, the cash certainly doesn’t. So what do you actually do when your wallet – the one containing your cards, your ID, your entire financial personality – vanishes? Here’s what, and you need to move fast.

Call your bank immediately. The moment you realise it’s gone, ring your bank and cancel every card. Not in an hour. Not after you’ve retraced your steps one more time. Now. Most banks have 24-hour lines and can freeze your cards before whoever found your wallet has worked out how to tap-to-pay their way through your savings at a series of increasingly optimistic contactless terminals.

Use your banking app. If you have mobile banking – and in 2026, if you don’t, I honestly don’t know what to tell you – you can freeze your cards instantly yourself without speaking to anyone. It takes about four seconds and considerably less dignity than explaining to a call centre that you left your purse next to the reduced bread.

Report it to police. File a report, even if you think nothing will come of it. You’ll need the reference number for insurance claims and, depending on what else was in there, potentially for fraud protection too.

Check your bank statements obsessively. For the next few weeks, look at every transaction. If anything suspicious appears, report it immediately to your bank. You are generally protected against fraudulent transactions, but only if you report them promptly.

Alert your other accounts. If your wallet contained any loyalty cards, store cards or anything that could link back to online accounts, update your passwords. Someone with your name, address and date of birth – which they may well have from a driving licence – can do quite a lot of damage if they feel like it.

Notify your insurance. If you have travel insurance or home contents insurance with personal belongings cover, put in a claim for the wallet and its contents. You may be surprised what’s covered.

The Edinburgh Christmas market, by the way, handed the purse in without touching a penny. There are good people in the world. But I wouldn’t count on it.