I’m not married and never have been, but I was thinking about this today in preparation for teaching my dad “the internets” and how to shop online. And getting him to use his credit card more.
I assume most married couples with credit card accounts have a joint account, meaning they can both sign for purchases made with the card and only one bill comes to the house.
So how do people keep their gifts to the SOs a secret if they are sharing a bill? Do you work it out so the charge won’t show up until after the gift is given? Do you just go to a brick & mortar store and pay cash? Do you “hide” the purchase amongst a bunch of other purchases from the same store?
My husband and I get communal gifts for partly this reason - we buy stuff for the house that we need or want. We’ve each got a credit card that isn’t shared, but they’re both specific retailer (I have BestBuy, he’s got Kawasaki, laptops and motorcycles for everyone!). I do all the bill-paying and accounting, so hiding stuff for any length of time would be difficult on his part (“What the hell is this $600 charge to Bed Bath and Beyond?” “Uh, nothing…”). That’s just how our personal finances work though, plenty of other couples have only partially joint or even totally separate finances.
We might be a bad sample though, as we’ve never been into gift exchanges, having been pretty damn broke most of our time together. We’re more into spur of the moment gifts at totally random points in the calendar, usually buying something that the other one wants but won’t buy for themselves.
We do have separate cards, as well as separate bank accounts so it’s easy to keep a gift secret from one another. The real problem for us is that we both get too excited and can’t wait to give each other our gifts so we end up exchanging early anyway.
We actually have separate credit cards, but a joint bank account, so the “Don’t peek” bit applies only to purchases made with the debit card. Darn those internets, though! What with an online account, it’s so easy to peek, because it’s not like either one of us has to wait until the end of the month for the statement to come in.
(Actually, though, that’s never been a problem for gift-buying reasons; it’s more an issue because I can’t get used to SkipMagic replying, "I know . . . " when I start a story with, "So I was in Target today . . . " or "I went out to lunch with some coworkers at the Japanese place today . . . ")
Pretty much the same here, except that the way our billing cycle works we don’t need to look until after. Most credit card bills are not that specific in any case.
We had that problem and the same conversation about not opening boxes arriving this week. We also opened a joint business credit card that mails separate statements for each person so that there was some mystery with gift giving.
It’s pretty easy. We use two different credit cards during the holidays, and each make sure not to look at the statements for the other card until after Christmas.
We have community funds and a single card. Mr. K has, on occasion, squirreled cash away for a long period of time and purchased a gift for me, but in reality, it’s all the same money and all purchases are visible to both of us. The “gift” is more the sentiment than the actual worth of the item. *“I love you new tool box.” *
We use one card and the statement comes on the first. I try not to buy stuff Too early, or she’ll see it before Christmas, but no matter what, she’ll always get to see what it costs.
And yes, sometimes she’ll bitch about how much I over-spent on her.
I’m sure many of you would find this condescending, but I just end up hugging her and telling her that to me she’s worth it until she stops hitting me. (She never hits hard.)
Credit card bills don’t generally say what was purchased, just where something was purchased and how much it cost. To me, those aren’t the important features of gifts from my spouse (what the gift actually is is more important), so it’s not a spoiler.
I’ve got boxes all over the workout room (which doubles as my office). I just tell him "Don’t start noticing stuff now!" I swear, I could hang a naked ninja from the ceiling by his ankles, and Mr. K could bump into it and not notice.
We have separate and joint finances with funds of every category in each. I beg and plead that anyone that feels the love tug so strongly that they combine everything to reconsider. Everyone needs their own funds and their own credit history because the unthinkable can happen.
If you really want to know you could find out. Me? I just glance over the electronic cc statement to make sure there’s no wacky charges and then I click on “pay bill.”
The Cub Mister just tells me not to look at the statement for a little while. He never looks at the statements so there’s nothing I have to tell him except don’t open any boxes that arrive.
The problem for me comes when I am not working anywhere. Then it feels like I am buying him a present with his own money and that makes me feel a little funny. I get over it pretty quickly, though.
We set a dollar amount. We use the same credit card but disguise the purchases by not revealing everything that we are buying for other people as well (e.g., I might order something for my mother from LLBean but tell my partner, “Don’t open the LLBean order”; or I might buy something for myself at Amazon and slide something for my partner into the order as well). I also buy presents at other times of the year and squirrel them away, and do a certain amount of cash purchasing. This usually maintains the surprise well.
We have a joint “household” card that we use for most stuff, but he & I each have our own cards that we use for this kind of thing (and he uses his for his business travel…easier to keep his expenses separate that way). I accidentally bought one of his gifts on our joint card this year, and had to tell him not to open the bill when it arrives because of it…I thought if he saw “cufflinks.com” on the bill, he MIGHT figure out what it is!
We have one credit card, which she rarely checks, so it’s not usually a hazard. If I want to be extra careful, though, I usually buy a gift card for a particular store (pick them up at Safeway or Longs). That way, I can buy her something from Nordstrum’s or Macy’s or whereever and it won’t register a blip if she looks at the credit card statement. Also, when, I use the gift card to make the purchase (usually anticipating on using up the whole thing), I bring the remainder ready in cash.
If it comes to shipping stuff, I always have everything delivered to my office.
