Comments on: Are Joint Credit Card Accounts a Good Idea?

By: PK

PK — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 19:49:04 +0000

Can you give me the details of your credit card that does a 2% flat rate reward on all purchases? Thanks

By: rudeboyrg

rudeboyrg — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 01:21:47 +0000

Jessc098 reminds me of an alcoholic who goes to other peoples’ homes and warns them to throw away the bottle of wine on their counter before it ruins their lives because the alcoholic things everybody else is one as well.

By: JENN

JENN — Mon, 31 May 2010 01:50:16 +0000

Again Bank of America offers co-signers aka joint credit card accounts. You can call them or use their live chat option and they will answer all your questions.

By the way if paid on time your should start seeing improvements on your credit within 9 months. You can also do a secured credit card, but the only problem is interest rate is super high, and top it off an annual fee.

To open a joint account bofa’s number is 1.866.227.1544

By: JENN

JENN — Mon, 31 May 2010 01:47:12 +0000

Joint credit card accounts do exist. Bank of America offers one. Once you build your credit up you can take the co-signer’s name off of the card, but the bad thing is you will affect their credit. So it’s best to use this as a last resource, and if you do it then keep the co-signer on it, but put the card away and then apply for a different credit card with just your name.

By: Matt Cowell

Matt Cowell — Tue, 11 May 2010 23:22:42 +0000

What is wrong with buying groceries and poaying utilities with a credit card, imo, its a great idea. You dont have to worry about what money you have in your account and dont have to face over withdrawel fees. If i shopped with my savings account, i wouldnt spend any less as a restriction.
MMy partner and I pay off our joint credit card weekly, 55 interest free, easy, been doing it for years!

By: GS

GS — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 01:21:10 +0000

My boyfriend has over 750 Fico score and mine is unfortunately at 680. He added me as an authorized user on one of his platinum cards. But I would prefer my great payment history to reflect on my Fico score. We would like to open a joint credit card to 1) help my credit score increase 2) to use for large household items (blinds, dishwasher, etc); because it’s too complicated to try to figure out who bought what at the end of each month. Where can I even find a joint credit card???? I have another credit card on my own, but the limit is less than desirable.

Please help.

By: Jerome

Jerome — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 21:52:56 +0000

I have little sympathy for people who are unable to hold their marriage together. Why’d you get married in the first place?

If you go in to a marriage thinking “no joint accounts because maybe we’ll get divorced”, then you’re probably setting yourself up for that inevitability.

By: Jerome

Jerome — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 21:49:59 +0000

Jessc098, what’s wrong with putting all the recurring monthly charges on the credit card? My view is that if you are unable to do that and control your spending, then you probably don’t have the ability to use a credit card wisely in the first place.

What’s the difference how you pay your bills if you pay them off each month? We have multiple reasons for charging everything possible on the credit card:

1. We have a rewards credit card that puts a flat 2% of all purchases in our daughter’s college fund. 2% of everything, no yearly cap. When we had our mortgage (we now own our house outright), I would have put the mortgage on the credit card had the bank allowed it without a fee. Our daughter gets between $1000 and $1200 a year for free. Multiply by 50 and you can see how much we’ll run through the credit card in a year.

2. It’s free money. Everyone knows about how banks and companies float money. While the money is floating, you essentially have free use of it at no cost. With all the people crying about how banks and financial institutions are so bad and take advantage of them, why don’t you do the same? You have a month of interest free money. Again, if you’re going to pay it off every month anyhow, why do you care how it is being paid?

3. The credit card statements provide you an easy way to keep track of your purchases. They get categorized (by many credit card companies) and you can easily see where your money is going.

As far as our marriage – coming up on 17 years thank you very much. As I mentioned, we have no mortgage and own our home. networthiq.com shows our net worth at about $1.7 million – which doesn’t include the $150,000 in the daughter’s prepaid college plan, the free credit card money going to the 529, or her $40,000 trust fund.

I say if you can’t do something as simple as use a credit card effectively between you and your spouse, I hope your marriage is better than your financial abilities.

“Still, the idea of putting recurring monthly expenses on revolving credit makes me very afraid. This sort of thing should be paid with real money!”

If you think that charging on a credit card is not “real money” then that’s a clear indication that maybe you shouldn’t be allowed to have one. It’s people like you who don’t understand what a credit card is or how to use it properly who are the biggest offenders.

By: Jerome

Jerome — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 21:30:25 +0000

If this is the way you think about credit card usage with your partner David, you’re marriage isn’t going to last very long.

By: Neil

Neil — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 22:00:13 +0000

When I first moved in with my girlfriend (now fiance) we tried a similar approach. It was complicated. What’s a joint expense, what’s not. Do you split the payment equally or relative to income. I found that because I had fewer charges on my personal account (no student loans to pay…I actually probably had higher discretionary spending), I would often have to put more money into joint spending and our down-payment savings simply because I was the one who had more available, despite making slightly less. Ultimately, after about 3 or 4 months of this, it just seemed stupid and we merged all of our accounts. You have to be on the same page when it comes to priorities and responsibility in order to do this, but in terms of simplifying family finance, it does seem like the way to go.

Re: Jessc – using a credit card for fixed monthly charges is a perfectly reasonable and rational thing to do. I haven’t paid a penny in interest, and have enjoyed thousands of dollars worth of free vacations by putting any spending item that will let me pay by cc on a card. This is what bugs me when people get up in arms about using credit cards for everything. It’s only a bad thing if you can’t pay it off. The rest of us are enjoying the good life, ultimately on the backs of those who are irresponsible.