My SO has moved a lot, before and after we met so she's ALWAYS having to call in and verify addresses. I know she doesn't enjoy it but she follows any instructions exactly and has caught on quickly.

I handle everything before and after the CC apps. I keep it simple with 1 card for everything right now. Meet spend then switch. Prioritize points and just keep it to 1 card, don't try to maximum between each card yet.

I do make sure to keep an eagle eye on her credit. I push the limits on mine but not hers as far as apps and open accounts go.

It would be pushing it for my wife to remember category bonuses. When we are not meeting min spends, our "go to" cards are CSP & Starwood AMEX. It is confusing to her when I switch out with cards to make min spends. I got the Ink Bold and added her to my card. Her "go to" cards presently are my Ink bold (min spends) for most things and Starwood Amex for Costco. Our FICO's are 750+ (me w/heavy churning) & wife's around 800.

I will have moderate medical bills since I switched to PPO insurance and will spend about $4-6K in medical bills for 2013. Will also have some dental bills coming up for the wife. (dentist take CC's^). I do have an employer pretax MSA (Only $2492 thanks to 2013 IRS regs lowering from $5K in 2013 ) but will pay medical bills on our rewards earning CC's and seek rembursement from the MSA.

I plan to apply for my wife (w/her permission of course!) for some CC's soon after I am done with min spends on my CC's.

Bottom line: It would be pushing it for my wife to use the cards for category bonuses but she is OK with me switching the cards to make min spends. We enjoy free/inexpensive travel and reward CC's make it possible. ^

So glad to have found this thread. I was ready to give up searching and then viola!

I'm new to the cc game. Plan to do an AoR soon and then churn down the road. As of right now, my wife has no idea I'm even thinking about this and would be surprised to learn I've spent about fifty hours in the past few weeks reading up on this hobby.

My wife is very old school when it comes to cc. Her dad never had one and she hates them! There was a time about twenty years ago when we overused them. Never had any negative hits on credit but we had a couple cards maxed out and it took us 2 years to climb out of that mess. Since then she wants nothing to do with them. Part of it is she's always afraid of having it declined at the register. A couple times in the past decade our debit card declined because of innocent reasons (i.e. used it too much in one day even though the account had plenty of funds) and she turned red and wanted to rush out of the store.

We have a high income so she would much rather just stuff money in her purse and use cash for everything. Like I said - old school.

So, I'm going to have to sell her on the benefits of my new hobby and it will probably come after she's had a glass of wine! We've been married 47 years and she does trust me but I'm still going to have to do some selling.

One question I have is regarding calls to the recon line. To maximize our benefits, I'll want some cards in her name. I'm pretty sure she will NEVER do that no matter how much I plead. I've read some posts that spouses call on behalf of the other party. I didn't think this was allowed.

Will I need a Power of Attorney (POA). I would think someone using a POA calling the recon line would be a red flag. I read on another thread about a guy that called and pretending he was his wife. Not sure how he was able to pull that off.

Thanks

If she agrees to let you apply in her name, usually the first few cards don't include a call to recon. If it does, most of us are in the situation where we start the call, when the agent asks, hand the phone to the spouse, spouse gives permission, you take it from there. A POA is overkill, and I am not sure a CS agent would have a methodology for that.

Start your wife with the Amex BCP, 6% off on groceries is pretty easy to understand (assuming your grocer takes Amex, and if she does the grocery shopping).

Great job on 47 years of marriage.

Thanks for the good info dcpilrim.

I almost always make a recon call for my wife when she's in the room to authorize the rep to talk to me. There was one time when my wife wasn't available and I had to pretend to be my wife. Didn't help matters much that my wife has a very traditional female name or that I have a very deep voice, but when the rep expressed some doubt I said, "Yeah, only 1% of everyone with my name is male, not the best time to be in that 1% huh!"

Same with me. I have her start the process and do the "phone handoff" to me. The way I see it, to fully maximize the benefit of this whole game, having your spouse participate is necessary.

For me, I simply do all the necessary spending for other 3 members of family. I only give them one card unless that card gets canceled. It was the SPG in the past year, now it is all AA as I tried to get as much of that 50k action as possible. It doesn't make that big of a difference what they use as I do 90% of the spending on credit cards anyway.

It also helps that the phone reps can't differentiate male asian names from females so I do all the recon too. =)

I periodically show her my transaction history from Vince and point out how this side hobby earns us about as much as an extra full-time^ low-wage job would^

Yea, my wife hated doing any kind of recon call, got to a point were we would be on a speaker phone so I could whisper to her what to say, now she's pretty good at it, rarely needs help. Once she saw the benefits she was sold, but the first year was tough, who says you can't train them.

Vince?? I can't translate or find that one.

OK, pretty funny thread.

As a male, I have a healthy fear of women's purses. I don't like going there. But I have learned that it works best to just manipulate the credit cards in her wallet. I go into the dreaded purse to remove and replace cards as appropriate. I put little stickers on her credit cards (actually, mine too, since it's hard to remember everything) to help her remember when to use a particular card.

We also do the "phone handoff" thing when it is time to cancel an account or see if we can extract some concession to keep an account open. I find that very amusing because, in general, she is much better on the phone than I.

After several years of playing this game, I think she now realizes that I am not going to ruin her credit. It was a common lament in the past, but several flights up front have fixed that.

Yeah, after thinking about it, I see your point. I'm sure some would see even a bit of weakness but, we all do what we have to do. 47 years of marriage has taught me a few things.

Update: I explained to my wife my new hobby yesterday. After some minor eye rolling and mild protests, she said, "whatever you want to do honey just don't run up balances on the cc's."

I handed her a brand new CMPE card, in her name, and told her to use it for everything she normally uses the debit card for over the next few months.

$3000 reimbursable expense put on a Delta Gold Amex card while I have a minimum spend to meet on Starwood. Clearly we need to work on the training program here. :-)

just 3 cards so far and my wife is already complaining..i have just been smiling..she hates the fact that i am changing credit cards so often