The 10 Best Credit Card Strategies for Married Couples

Managing your finances is one of the first things you do to protect your marriage from bankruptcy, and guarantee yourself a happy retirement. While there are many aspects of your finances that you need to manage, your credit card expenditure is going to be our focus. Most people see a credit card as a necessarily liability, but it can actually be more of an asset if you use it properly. The only reason that it appears as a liability when you start to repay the debts you accumulate is that you only used it to get into debt; you didn’t plan to use it as a financial cash flow tool. To help you make good use of your credit card, here are The 10 Best Credit Card Strategies for Married Couples.

State all Your Sources of Income

Credit card companies do not care whether you are married or not, what they look at is your sources of income. These are not just limited to income such as your salary, other sources such as alimony, government benefits, child support, investment dividends, as well as income from your spouse counts as well. What you need to do is list them all when you apply for the credit card as an individual. You partner should also do the same thing, you can then use the combined power of your two credit cards to get more funding without acquiring more debt than you can comfortably service.

Pay Your Previous Debts

If you just got married, you need to clear your previous debts before you can apply for a new credit card in your new union. That will allow you to start managing your individual finances without bringing your past financial burden to your partner. That will not only make it easy to share your financial plans, but it will not make the other party feel like they are being paying for something that doesn’t have anything to do with them. It will also help to prove to your credit issuer that you are not a credit risk.

Clear With Other Credit Card Issuers

You credit card report includes any debts you have with other card issuers. If you want to improve your credit worthiness, paying debts you have to third parties will do the trick for you. Otherwise, it will just appear to the new card issuer that you are simply running away from your past card issuers.

Statement Cycle

It’s possible that you always plan and clear your statement balance before you get charged any interest. However, what most people don’t realize is that when your card issuer gives your card statement to credit card bureaus after statement each cycle, they report it as debt, even if you are still within the grace period. It’s therefore important to sync your the dates you hope to clear your card balance with the card’s statement cycle. That way, it won’t appear that you are always in debt to the credit card bureaus.

Best Time to Apply for A new Card

The best time to apply your new card is not before you credit card statement is issued, but about four days after the statement cycle is over. At that time, the payments you made before the statement was issued will also be reflecting your card statement.

Reconsideration Call

You shouldn’t make an application for a new credit card, just before you cleared your credit card balance. That because the credit card updates are automated, and so are the decisions made based on the date the data was received. However, they credit card company trusts its telephone representatives to make the right call based on updated data they have. You can therefore call them to have your credit card application reevaluated.

Make a New Application

If you application for a new credit card has been rejected because of your current debts, you can simply pay them up, then wait a month and make a new application. You can use your partner’s income to do that if you didn’t have too much debt pending.

Increase Your Credit Card Limit

If one partner has more income but a lower credit card rating, and the other partner has a lower income but with a good credit card rating, you can combine the two positives to help the partner with a good credit card rating increase their card limit. You can then use the new higher limit to manage your finances better.

Keep All Cards Open

The longer you own a card without it having any debt, the better it’s for you. You only have to make sure you don’t overdo it. Having about three cards for a long time, and not getting into debt will improve your credit worthiness.

Make Your Spouse an Authorized User

If you cannot get a approved for a new card, you can ask your partner to make you an authorized user. As an authorized user, you will be able to use the card and repay the debts, but only your spouse will get the rewards. However, the card must still be used responsibly; otherwise, the rating will drop quickly as well if the debts are not paid in a timely manner.