Bank accounts sometimes require the account holder’s mother’s maiden name for security purposes. The comedienne Paula Poundstone said in the HBO comedy special Women of the Night (1988):
 
“I don’t have a bank account because I don’t know my mother’s maiden name and apparently that’s the key to the whole thing right there. I go in every few weeks and guess.”
 
Poundstone’s joke has been included in many lists of one-line sayings.
 
     
Wikiquote: Paula Poundstone
Paula Poundstone (born December 29, 1959) is an American comedian.
 
Sourced
I don’t have a bank account because I don’t know my mother’s maiden name and apparently that’s the key to the whole thing right there. I go in every few weeks and guess.
. “Women of the Night”, HBO, 1988
 
Google Books
The Fourth—and by Far the Most Recent—637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said:
Many given heightened piquancy by nineteenth-century line cuts
By Robert Byrne
New York, NY: Atheneum
1990
303
I don’t have a bank account, because I don’t know my mother’s maiden name.
Paula Poundstone
 
6 September 1999, The Deseret News (Salt Lake City, UT), “Wit and wisdom in a pithy little book‎”“
“I don’t have a bank account because I can’t remember my mother’s maiden name.”—Paula Poundstone
 
Google Books
Words from the Wise:
Over 6,000 of the Smartest Things Ever Said
By Rosemarie Jarski
New York, NY: Skyhorse Publishing
2007
Pg. ?:
I don’t have a bank account because I don’t know my mother’s maiden name.
Paula Poundstone
   
Google Books
Dim Wit:
The Stupidest Quotes of All Time
By Rosemarie Jarski
Berkeley, CA: Ulysses Press
2010
Pg. 309:
I don’t have a bank account because I don’t know my mother’s maiden name.
Paula Poundstone