A good way to always have cash while travelling is to get a belt wallet. You will get mugged for your phone and your bag and what they presume to be your actual wallet, but they aren't going to ask for your belt or even whatever you might have shoved into your sock.
Yeah. Most places I wouldn't bother but there are circumstances where that's good advice--though I'd probably actually use something where I could tuck in a spare credit card.
Unfortunately TSA generally makes you remove your money pouch when they're feeling up your genitals, making it so everyone can see that you have a money pouch. Yet another way the Orwellian-named agency makes individual travelers less secure.
They might make you remove your belt but they won't open the belt up or anything like that. Plus you probably won't be mugged at the airport itself or make yourself much of a target beyond everyone else putting a $2000 laptop on the conveyer belt.
I sometimes have removed my ID or credit card from my wallet while going through TSA and I just kept it in my fingers (visible to them) while getting Terahertz scanned or going through metal detectors, so it never left my person. Protecting against the small risk of it being stolen during the process of X-raying my belongings and recovering them.
Especially when tired and/or jet-lagged you're probably a lot better off leaving as much as possible in a bag than handling it through security screening. After losing a drivers license at the airport a few years ago--which caused less of a hassle with TSA than I expected but was a real issue with hotel check-in--I only use my Global Entry card for domestic check-in because I don't really need that card for anything.
The more I have to unpack my person and splay my things out for inspections, the less secure I am. Even against basic stuff like accidentally leaving something. The main goal when traveling is to keep your shit together, and the TSA forces you to the exact opposite for theater. So I gave up wearing the money belt through airports, and just leave it in my bag.
I'm certainly not arguing against the device overall - they're still useful when you get to your destination. It just seems the destruction of individual safety by technocratic authoritarianism is right at home in a thread about "cashless society".
