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In a PG or hostel, things usually go missing in ordinary ways: a phone left charging in the common room, cash left on a bed, a card whose PIN someone saw you type. The fixes are small and cheap, and the best time to set them up is your first week.
How do you keep money and phone safe in a hostel or PG room?
Start with one lockable space that only you can open: a drawer with a lock, a steel trunk under the bed, or a small cash box chained to the bed frame. Keep the key on your house-key ring, not in your bag.
What goes inside:
Cash beyond what you need this week
Debit card and cheque book when you are not using them
Original documents (Aadhaar, mark sheets, admission letter) in one folder
A paper card with emergency numbers and your phone's IMEI
Your phone, a little cash and one card stay on you. Never leave the phone charging alone in a shared room.
If your room has no lockable space, raise it before the next month's rent. Our six-point checklist for choosing a hostel or PG in Kota covers what to check before you sign, and how to talk to a hostel warden about problems helps if you need to ask later.
How should you set up UPI and cards when living away from home?
Keep most of your money in one account, and send a fixed weekly amount to a second, UPI-linked account. A thief can only reach this week's money.
Look in your UPI or banking app's settings for a daily limit. Where the option exists, set it close to a normal day's spending.
Use a screen lock and a UPI PIN that is not your birth year or your phone's screen-lock code.
Turn off card features you don't use. Since 16 March 2020, RBI has required card issuers to give all cardholders a 24x7 way to switch card use on or off and set limits for domestic, international, shop, ATM, online and contactless transactions, through channels such as the mobile app, internet banking, ATMs or a phone line; prepaid gift cards and mass-transit cards are exempt (RBI notification, 15 January 2020).
Register your own mobile number with the bank so every SMS alert reaches you. RBI's 2017 rules say banks may not offer electronic transactions other than ATM cash withdrawals to customers who do not give a mobile number (RBI circular, 6 July 2017).
For scams that arrive by call or message, read how to stay safe while using UPI as a student.
How do you back up documents before moving to a PG?
Documents issued or pushed into DigiLocker by government departments and organisations are deemed at par with the original paper documents under Rule 9A of the Digital Locker rules, an amendment notified on 8 February 2017 (Jammu and Kashmir IT Department circular on DigiLocker). Set it up at home with a parent, pull in your Aadhaar and board mark sheets, and check that you can both log in.
Keep photocopies of every ID and mark sheet apart from the originals, and scans in a cloud folder a parent can open.
Back up study notes too, so a lost phone doesn't take a semester of photographed notes with it. If you study with Fermi's AI tutor, your progress, notes and everything generated along the way stay in your library.
What should you do if your phone or wallet is stolen?
Work through this in order; steps 1 to 3 protect your money.
From a friend's phone, call your bank's helpline to block your cards and UPI, then ask your mobile operator to block the SIM.
If money has already left your account, call 1930. The Ministry of Home Affairs runs 1930 as a toll-free helpline for reporting financial fraud and getting help to file a complaint on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal, cybercrime.gov.in (PIB, 6 April 2022).
Report each unauthorised transaction to your bank in writing. Under RBI rules, if the fault lay with neither you nor the bank and you report within three working days of the bank's alert, your liability is zero (RBI circular, 6 July 2017). Once you report it, the bank must credit the disputed amount to your account within 10 working days.
File a lost or theft report with the police and keep a copy.
Block the handset on the Department of Telecommunications' Sanchar Saathi CEIR portal, and unblock it there if it turns up.
Get a duplicate SIM, then change your email and social media passwords.
Tell the PG owner or warden and ask whether common areas have CCTV.
Tonight, take ten minutes: find a lock for your drawer, write down your IMEI, and save your bank's helpline in a parent's phone as well as your own.
