Whether it’s the durability, simplicity, or just the cool design. When it comes to those bulky old leather wallets that so many men carry around with them every day, we all remember the episode of Seinfeld where George’s wallet got stuffed so full that he couldn’t close it. Seinfeld might’ve exaggerated this rather common phenomenon, but just barely, as the vast majority of men out there certainly do wedge way too much into that leather strap. That’s certainly not a comfortable thing to wedge in your pocket.
However, if you’re still waiting to transition from a regular bulky wallet to a slick, clean Ridge—or if you already have one, and you’re trying to convince a buddy to make the change—here’s one perk you might’ve not realized: the health benefits.
A sizeable percentage of men tend to carry their wallet in their back pocket, which means that, most likely, they spend a sizeable percentage of the day sitting on it—unevenly. When you have a wallet that fat, you’d need to stuff something of equal size inside the other back pocket to even things out, and no one wants to do that. This means that quite a few people simply sit unevenly every day, for hours at a time, and simply make the best of it.
According to Spine-Health.com, when a person sits on their bulky wallet—I.E., with one hip elevated, and the other hip lowered—it causes extra stress to the lumbar disks near the roots of your sciatic nerves, pinching or irritating them. Doing this for extended periods of time can cause you to develop the symptoms of sciatica, a painful spine condition that is the enemy of many manual laborers, nurses, and other workers across the country. Naturally, the bigger and fatter that your wallet is, the worse that this condition can become. The sciatica symptoms caused by frequently sitting with one elevated hip are common enough that this condition has even earned the name “wallet sciatica.”
Okay, so if someone is still clinging onto that fat leather wallet, their first response to hearing about wallet sciatica might be to start tucking their wallet into their front pocket instead. But not so fast, says Jada Green of Men’s Health: citing Dr. Stuart McGill, a professor of spine biomechanics, she points out that wedging your fat wallet into your front pocket might not be as bad as being one of those back pocket uneven sitters, but it has its own problems. Chiefly, when you’re sitting down, it can create a painful pinch between your thigh and torso.
This sort of situation isn’t a big deal for a few minutes, but for extended durations such as sitting in a car or eating at a restaurant, it can get a lot worse. One solution to this problem is to simply take out your wallet every time you sit down, but that comes with its own set of problems: possibility of theft, forgetting where you put it, walking out without grabbing it, and so son.
Naturally, we think we have a better solution: get a thinner wallet, such as the Ridge. When you replace a bulky strap with a thin strip of metal, like the Ridge Wallet, you cancel out all of the problems associated with the bulky one. A Ridge Wallet can slide right into your front pocket with ease, not weigh the pocket down, and seemingly disappear until you need it.
So if you have that friend who is still clinging onto their old bulky wallet, show them this, and get them on the Ridge bandwagon: after all, their spine depends on it.
