I’d had the same bank account in Australia for donkey’s years and subsequently both my bank account and ATM card pin numbers were burned into my memory.

When I came to Taiwan I had to apply for a new bank account and along with that came a brand new pin number. Ohoh.

My new pin number was longer then the old one and unfamiliarly random. Given my infrequent use of the banking system here there was a good chance it was going to take a few months for me to remember it.

Fat lot of good that’d do me if I was out and needed to withdraw some money.

One day I was sitting around weighing up my options. I could write out the pin and try to hide it in my wallet somewhere. On the off chance my wallet was stolen or lost then of course there’d be the worry that someone could clear out my money before I realised.

I thought about carrying the ‘your pin number is xxxxxxx’ bit of paper around but that just carried the same problems as my first thought.

Then it hit me…

Most banks strongly discourage you (for obvious reasons) to not record your pin number anywhere, especially on your card! With a bit of creativeness though it’s not all that hard to come up with a system that’ll probably go unnoticed if someone finds your wallet.

For me that came in the way of a shopping list.

Shopping lists are common enough that if you found one in a wallet it’s not like your going to make the connection between it and an ATM card pin number.

My system involved writing out a short list and using grocery items that carried the same first letter as the numbers I was trying to remember. For example if my ATM card pin number was 123456 my list would probably look something like this;

Oranges

Tweezers

Thin sausages

Foam sponges

Figs

Sieve

Note that for numbers that carry the same starting letter (eg.four and five), you can use the first two letters in the word to make it easier.

For extra security you can pad out the list by adding three items at the top and three items at the bottom, add a bogus item on every second line, write the list backwards or any combination of the three.

This method isn’t foolproof but it served me well and left me with relative piece of mind knowing that if someone found my wallet they’d have to really try.

Of course you could just try and memorise the number and hope your memory holds but who’s got time for that! Ideally after using this list you should be able to memorise your number soon enough and discard it. I wouldn’t count on relying on it indefinitely.

As a safety precaution I’d also check the list before hand and only resort to pulling it out again at the machine unless your completely stuck. You don’t want to make the list’s purpose too obvious to anyone that might be watching.

Using this method it took me about a month to memorise my pin and discard my list. I guess it’ll vary from person to person but it sure beats writing numbers down or worrying about forgetting your number altogether!


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