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When should you add your spouse as an authorized user to your credit card?
I’ve been doing the whole miles and redemptions thing for a while now, but I recently got married, and was wondering: How does this all work when you combine your finances with a spouse?
For example, if you’re both working on SUBs for cards, do you pay your individual cards off from a shared account?
What if some of the expenses are not “shared”? etc.
And, how frequently do you make your spouse an authorized user?
I know how player 1 and player 2 works, but I would love to get a read on how married couples manage this hobby with shared finances 🙂
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5 Replies
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We keep our cards themselves separate and typically don’t do AUs on one another’s cards, instead preferring to just refer back and forth.
I don’t think it matters what bank account is used to pay off card balances. However, you and your spouse want to deal with those details is up to you.
A single joint checking account could be used to pay off cards for each spouse, or you could keep your own checking account and pay it off.
The combination of spousal property can be a contentious issue that is probably beyond the scope of this group.
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I think this depends on how you manage your finances. Some couples maintain separate finances with a joint account only for shared expenses. Some couples throw everything into a pot and everything becomes a joint expense. It really depends.
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My wife and I have completely merged finances with no personal accounts, so there are no accounting problems figuring out what gets paid from where.
I handle most of the credit card sign-ups and will let my wife know when she needs to apply for a new card or if there are interesting spending bonuses. If she knows about a big expense coming up, she’ll ask me if we need a new card for the signup bonus.
She handles the accounting, making sure everything is paid on time and also flagging annual fees that require a keep / cancel / product change decision. I’m trying to take over some of the card management functions so they don’t wait until the annual fee appears.
Add, thinking ahead, we have two kids 22 and 24. They were A/Us on some of our cards from their mid-teens (and still are, for lounge access) but I never used them as P3 and P4 so they would still have the full range of cards available to them as adults.
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Our finances (30+ years married, 2 years retired) are completely combined. All credit card bills are on auto-pay from our joint checking account. My husband keeps track of those. I am P1 in the credit card game and do most of the travel planning. We consult/discuss regularly. We are able to work this way because we are fortunate to have the same basic attitude towards money.
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We got married in our 30s and have completely separate finances, and just worked out who pays for what fixed expenses so that part is equal outlay. I see no point to authorized user cards bc there is no intro bonus there, so I only made one AMEX in each direction an authorized user, only when they would give points for doing so, because for me to transfer AMEX points to her ANA account, for example, Amex requires that she be an AU on one of my accounts for 30 days prior.
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