The 10 Best Money Clip Wallets
Special Honors
Nutsac Clipster Whether it’s parked in a guy’s back pocket or ultimately finds a home in a lady’s purse, this handsome option doesn’t discriminate. The fit might feel a bit tight at first, but the leather should loosen up within a few days. It features a special privacy flap and it’s backed by a lifetime guarantee. nutsac.com
Mitchell Leather From American cowhide to natural bison or vintage football leather, this front pocket wallet is available in a variety of designs, most of which you can customize with initials, which comes in handy if you’re getting it as a gift. Each version manages to look rustic and polished at the same time. mitchell-leather.com
Editor's Notes
May 28, 2019:
We discovered availability issues with the House of Jack Skull, Adamant Black and XBand Thin, so we withdrew those three items from the list. We also removed the Kinzd Front Pocket, noting multiple reports that its strong magnet frequently demagnetizes the strip on credit cards and transit cards, rendering them unusable.
We did find the Deacon, a bifold model from House of Jack that serves as an adequate replacement for the Skull. While most tend to agree it’s well-made and durable, some reports suggest that it can become a bit bulky once it’s loaded with cards and cash, so if slimness is your number one priority, you may want to consider another option.
All three of the other new additions — the NapaWalli Front Pocket, Travelambo Slim and Amelleon Men’s — are constructed with technology for blocking radio-frequency identification, which can be used as a form of digital theft in which credit cards can be read and duplicated. Of the new ones, we found the Amelleon Men’s to offer the best value. Users seem highly satisfied with its ability to hold cards and bills securely without making them too tight to easily retrieve. Physically, it’s well-built with quality stitching and elegant-looking leather.
The Princess And The Money Clip
Now, I may not be a princess, but I might be a jerk, because I cannot stand an intrusive wallet.
In the tale of the princess and the pea, a young prince has a whale of a time trying to get married. It turns out he's a bit of a choosy jerk, and he wants his bride to be a jerk like him. All the girls that he tests out are either too fat or too thin, have poor table manners or shoddy ways of speech and dress, so he discards them like ill-fitting shoes.
Finally, a manic pixie dream girl magically appears on his doorstep, drenched in rain and claiming to be a princess. How does the prince verify her claim? Well, thankfully, his mother, queen of the jerks, has an idea. They put the girl to bed atop a mountain of mattresses and feather beds under the bottom-most of which the prince's mother places a single pea.
In the morning, the girl complains of a sleepless night, having been kept awake by some terrible nuisance in her mattresses. The jerks rejoice, having found someone as hopelessly pampered and irresolutely stuck-up as they are, and they live jerkily every after.
Now, I may not be a princess, but I might be a jerk, because I cannot stand an intrusive wallet. Beyond a certain thickness, a wallet becomes an albatross of the anterior, a discomfort in the coolie beyond all reckoning. I've gone so far as to measure my wallet with calipers at the addition of a new card so as to make sure it's within an acceptable girth.
What makes the money clip wallets on this list so enticing is that they are, to a model, supremely thin. It's as though a consortium of designers got together and took all my personal considerations to heart in their development. They hold credit cards and ID cards galore, clipping money to their sides with thin slivers of tension-bearing metal or by elastic bands, and they all do so without lifting one side of your rump an extra few inches off your seat.
Cleaning House
Odds are that if you're investigating money clip wallets like these then you've finally had enough of carrying around a tennis ball of old receipts and faded business cards in your back pocket. Shopping for a new wallet is not without its challenges, though, especially when thickness is your enemy.
Most standard wallets on the market are too thick for my tastes even when they're completely empty. If you're going to fit the essentials, and only the essentials into your pocket, you must first pare your collection down to just that: the bare essentials.
Now that you've got your outfit shrunken beyond all trimmings, you can choose a good wallet.
It's probably a good idea to cut down on the number of credit cards you have to begin with, but if you must own a dozen of them, figure out which ones you actually use daily, weekly, monthly, etc. Don't carry anything with you that you don't use at least once a week.
Find a nice little storage box, something made of stained wood or a gleaming metal, in which you can store all those business cards you've been collecting. They don't belong in your wallet. As far as cash goes, consider distributing it on your body in more than one place. This will cut down on bulk, and it will allow you to surrender smaller sums to muggers or beggars.
Now that you've got your outfit shrunken beyond all trimmings, you can choose a good wallet. Let your eye move you before anything else. It isn't an accessory that everyone is going to see, but you want your wallet to coincide with as much of your wardrobe as possible. As such, try to find something that suits your personality. Then, you can start analyzing features.
Consider the devices used for securing your bills inside the clip. For some, security trumps fashion, while, for others, appearances are more important than keeping your bills in perfect order. Consider material, as well. Genuine leather will last longer, no two ways about it. I've had a leather money clip wallet for the better part of five years, and only now is it in need of replacement, and that's because I was silly enough to buy a wallet with a plastic window for my ID, and that plastic has finally begun to degrade.
Rolling Papers Within
Before paper currency outmaneuvered the coin as the go-to representative of payable debts in the west, folks carried their money in purses and pouches of all kinds. Most often these were cinched about the top with small, braided ropes, and they freely mixed all forms of currency together in a single bag.
Most often these were cinched about the top with small, braided ropes, and they freely mixed all forms of currency together in a single bag.
Then, in 1690, the Massachusetts Bay Colony in The New World introduced the first paper currency, which lead rather quickly to the development of something akin to the modern wallet. These were larger apparatuses, and they were worn on the belt through to the 19th century, as keeping ones wallet in a pocket was considered uncouth.
Wallets in the days of yore weren't just for carrying money, either, especially since more impoverished individuals often traded goods and had less access to currency. Spanish wallets, for example, often contained within them the rudiments of smoking: a tobacco pouch, papers, flint, etc.
It wasn't until the 1950s that the wallets we recognize, with their dedicated slots for American-sized dollars as well as smaller slots for credit cards (a relatively new concept in the 50s) took our pants by storm.