My experience is that a fully-shielded wallet isn't so bad. I just got back to the US from a month in Europe. The entire time, I was carrying passport, credit

My experience is that a fully-shielded wallet isn't so bad. I just got back to the US from a month in Europe. The entire time, I was carrying passport, credit cards, transit-system cards, hotel key cards, etc. in a fully shielded wallet. It wasn't a problem at all to have to pull out the transit card when necessary in order to get on/off a tram or bus, or enter/leave a station (hotel key card has to come out anyway, since often you have to put it in the slot by the door to turn on the room's lights). And the peace of mind is worth it. (my only actual complaint about the wallet is that I bought it because it had an internal zippered pouch for coins, something that's much more useful for EUR than for USD, but the zipper broke after less than a week)