Some days I think that Chip's identity is too safe. Yes, I know that identity theft is a huge and growing problem and that privacy safeguards are supposed to protect against such nefarious schemes, but is it really necessary that he be protected from me?
I’m talking specifically about the designation within joint accounts of one person or the other as the “primary account holder.” And while I don’t want to cry sexism where it’s not deserved, it seems to me that primary account holder status generally defaults to the possessor of the penis in the relationship. (Or, as I have started thinking of it, the holder of the magical wang.)
I guess “joint” just doesn’t mean what I think it means. To my mind, a joint account implies that two people have chosen to enter into a contract--together--with a bank or a cable company or a credit card company and that both people are responsible, reliable adults. Instead, this new phenomenon creates a sort of junior partner status in which the non-primary person cannot do even simple things without the senior partner’s “approval.”
Here’s an example. Over the weekend, I went to a mobile phone store to look at some options for an upgrade. When I asked the helpful salesperson which phones were discounted for me, he couldn’t access my account to tell me because I was not there with the primary account holder, i.e. Chip. Only by producing a code could I prove my worthiness.
You know, I don’t want to launch the space shuttle. I just want to look at mobile phones. To my mind, that should not involve a single code. But I called Chip anyway, to ask if he had the code. He didn’t.
Then, today, I got a credit card statement in the mail with an unexpected and unpleasant surprise. Seems that the payment I sent out from our Internet bill payer service before New Year’s didn’t quite get to Delaware in time, and we’d been assessed a $39 late fee. So I called the company.
I gave our account number and answered the security question and then explained my problem, asking her to take off the charge. But the friendly woman could not help me with that because I am not the primary account holder. Only Chip, she explained, could make a request of that nature. Right. Because clearly I might be calling for my own nefarious purposes and thwarting Chip’s desires to wrack up maximum late charges.
Look, I get that these measures are supposed to be for our own privacy and safety, but I’m not asking to up our credit limit because I went out and bought a few too many dresses without asking “permission” from my husband like some bad episode of a 1950s sitcom. I’m trying to accomplish something that he would doubtless do on his own, if he had picked up the mail first today. It’s ridiculous to think that he is the only one on our “joint account” who can take care of these sorts of things—especially when I’m the one in our relationship who usually does.
Our money is just that: our money; we both put into the accounts, and those are our names—signed together—on the dotted lines when we apply for credit. Just because his name comes first doesn’t make it more important. Or at least it didn’t, before the age of the “primary account holder.”
NB: A version of this piece--sans the bit about the magical wang, natch--appeared in this morning's Business to Business, a publication of the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.