How to Hide Gifts From Your Partner When Sharing Bank Accounts
You probably don’t want to get into the habit of hiding things from your partner or spouse, but a little privacy doesn’t hurt when you’re trying to surprise them with a gift. When you share financial accounts, it is easy to spoil the surprise. However, there are a few tricks to get around this problem.
Sign up to Amazon Household
Cnet suggests if you and your partner share the same Amazon account. This way, you can share the benefits of Prime while keeping your purchases to yourself.
The service allows you to add another adult to your account, as well as four teens and four children, which also comes in handy when you’re trying to hide gifts from children. Sign in with your Prime account, then add your partner’s Amazon account. If they don’t have it, you just register them to get a new one. You can share the benefits of Prime so they still get fast shipping, but you can’t see their order history, and vice versa.
Make sure your partner is signed out of your account on all of their devices before purchasing. Otherwise, they may still receive notifications when you buy things for them.
Delete Amazon history
Another option is to simply delete your Amazon browsing history. That way, at least your partner won’t see that you bought the new juicer he was eyeing. To do this, click on the “Browsing History” link below the search bar on the Amazon home page. You will see a list of all the shit that you viewed, and you can simply hit delete on stuff that Amazon shouldn’t remember.
Take it a step further and go to the Improve Your Recommendations list and tell Amazon to ignore certain items you’ve already purchased.
Disable push notifications
You also don’t want your partner to see their gift pop up on your phone while it sits on the table. On MarketWatch, needs expert Andrea Voroch suggests turning off your push notifications :
Sometimes, for example, you will receive a confirmation email when a purchase is submitted and it will appear as a push notification on your smartphone. If the phone is outdoors, this message may appear for family members to see.
If you are using Google Assistant, you can change your settings to exclude certain notifications as well. Go to Settings> Personal and uncheck Email to prevent your phone from displaying delivery updates for online purchases.
Don’t let targeted ads spoil your surprise
Facebook and other social platforms can also kill your surprise (like this messed up interaction ) by showing you ads related to what you’ve watched online. Here’s what one security expert at Money suggested:
… install a tool like Adblock Plus (which blocks some or all of the ads according to user-verified filters), Privacy Badger (which automatically blocks trackers or ads that it believes violate the “user consent principle”), or some combination of several blockers.
We also suggested Adblock Plus, and here are some more recommendations . You can also shop online in private browsing mode to prevent your browser from saving your history.
Use gift cards or cash
If you and your partner use a credit card or are just familiar with each other’s purchases, cash is an easy option, at least for spending in the store. Just go to the ATM and grab whatever you need to cover your purchase. But if for some reason you don’t want to use an ATM (maybe at an additional cost?), Buy a gift card at the grocery store. You can either buy a gift card from the store itself, or just buy a prepaid gift card (again, there may be a fee for it).
Don’t forget, many retailers on the Internet and even in stores accept Paypal or Google Wallet as a form of payment. Depending on the store, you can also just pay from these accounts and “Paypal” will appear on your credit card statement or budget app.
Hide transaction name on Mint
If you share a Mint account with your partner, you can hide your transactions in one of two ways: hide the entire account, or simply hide individual, specific purchases. Mint.com explains:
You can hide your account either on the whole Mint.com or just in the budgets and trends section.
Here’s how to hide your account:
- Click the “Settings” link at the top of the page.
- Click the Hide icon in the left pane menu.
- Select the radio button for the account you want to hide and decide if you want to hide it from Budgets and Trends or Anywhere.
If you just want to hide certain transactions, go to the “Change details” section of the transaction, check the “This is a duplicate” box, then make sure the duplicate transactions are hidden. On the transactions page, click the gear icon and select Hide Duplicate Transactions. You can also just edit and modify the Mint transaction itself so that it appears with a different name.
So, instead of Best Buy, your transaction might look something like “Holiday Spend” or “Don’t Look If You Don’t Want to Ruin the Surprise.”