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As the countdown to our wedding day continues, conversations about how my fiance and i are going to treat our finances once we say “yes”. We had long discussions about whether we should keep things as they have been for the last four years of our life together (we have kept all our money separate) or if we had to combine our cash and credit cards.
After weighing the pros and cons, we decided to keep it as it is and say no to joint credit card opening (which isn’t even an option with most large emitters these days). We won’t do either add the other as an authorized user on our own accounts. Although we have received reluctance from the family and financial experts who think it’s a good idea to help pay for big purchases together and simply stay on the same wavelength financially, we do not agree.
Here are the top reasons why my fiance and I plan to keep our credit cards completely separate, even after we get married.
We want to earn and redeem our own pool of points
My fiance and I take our credit card rewards very seriously. From the start of our relationship, we agreed that these points would be a fair game for each of us to use individually. We usually take turns pay large joint purchases so we can alternate who hooks the dots – for example, one of us just bought new furniture for the house and the other paid for the house renovations.
Keeping these points and miles separate will allow each of us to use them for our own fun rewards. I plan to use some of my points for future solo travel (when COVID-19 wears off) and my fiance will be exchanging some of them to cover travel and accommodation for his bachelor party.
When you add an authorized user, any rewards they earn for spending usually accrue to your account, not theirs. Putting the expenses on our own cards will keep it simple for winning and redeeming.
60,000 points
Good to Excellent
Featured Reward
3 free nights (each worth up to 50,000 points) after qualifying purchases and 10x total points on qualifying purchases in certain categories
Credit needed
Good to Excellent
Featured Reward
$ 200 after spending $ 500 on purchases in the first three months after opening the account
Credit needed
Good to Excellent
Keeping personal expenses private is important to us
One of our big fears is that a shared credit card account can cause a lot of unnecessary friction in our relationship. We’ve been together for almost five years and still have kept our money and credit cards separate, and we’ve never had a problem dividing the bills and paying things fairly.
During that time, we never looked at each other’s credit card statements. Because of that, we have no fights on purchases that we decide to pay for ourselves. It’s easier not having to explain or justify some of our personal purchases, like getting my hair done and fingernails handled, or spending money on restaurant lunches and tech gadgets.
My spending habits are not like his
I know that my spending habits are different from my fiance’s – I like stick to a tight budget and don’t spend as much as him on items like food and activities. Sharing a credit card would make me frustrated and stressed out, and I’m afraid I would start micromanaging its use if he was an authorized user on one of my accounts.
Some couples do the opposite and combine their credit card strategies to earn more points. Since what we’re doing now is working well for us (keeping our credit cards separate and taking turns paying for big ticket items), we want to keep our approach the same during the transition to marriage.
We might never combine our finances
We haven’t decided if we will never combine our finances, and if we got married and started to confuse our credit card accounts, we would have this joint obligation even if later we choose to keep things separate. Not opening a joint credit card or adding yourself as authorized users until we have made a final decision seems like the right way to go at this time.
Our Approaches to Credit Card Debt Are Different
Our credit scores are different, just like our approaches credit card debt management. Adding an authorized user or opening a common card would result in each of our credit scores has an impact on the other, and we prefer to continue build them on our own. Pay the cards using our own individual strategies helps to avoid disagreements.
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