How to Keep a Gift a Secret from Your Spouse

Keeping gifts a secret can be tough at the best of times. You spend all that time trying to find the perfect gift idea and then your spouse figures out what you’ve bought them before the big reveal. If you’ve bought someone something amazing, then the first thing you’re going to want to do is tell them exactly what it is. Plus, there’s always the risk that your friend or loved one will start considering buying themselves the present that you’ve bought. Then you need to engage in that odd dance where you try and keep them excited about the item, while convincing them not to buy it. 

If you’re living with your other half, and you share bank accounts (or at least see each other’s bank statements), then it can be incredibly difficult to keep something secret. 

Ultimately, you shouldn’t get into the habit of hiding anything from your partner – especially finances. But if you want to keep your gift a secret for a little while, here are some tips. 

1.   Hide the Transaction Name

If you and your partner share an account on Mint or a similar budgeting app, you can hide transactions in a few ways. Hiding individual, specific purchases will allow you to remove the name of the purchase from the list that your partner sees on the app – although they’ll still be able to see that some money has gone missing. If they bring it up, you’ll just need to let them know that you’ve got them a little something, and it will all become clear again later. 

There’s also the option on some budgeting apps to change the name of the transaction so it comes up as something different too. Once again, we don’t recommend getting into the habit of using this feature, but it might be handy for gift purposes. 

2.   Use Cash or Gift Cards

Even if you don’t share a bank account with your other half, they’re probably going to be aware of money going out of your bank account when you sit down to work on the budget together. The only thing that doesn’t have as much of a paper trail, is using cash or vouchers instead. If you’ve got vouchers from previous gift exchanges that you haven’t used, then maybe you could consider using that as a way to pay for the item you want. 

Gift cards are a lot handier than cash, because even if you take cash out of the ATM, it’s still going to show up on your shared accounts or bank statements. But at least that way you can make sure that your partner isn’t seeing which store their gift is coming from. 

3.   Use a Payment App

There are quite a few apps that allow you to buy things online with cash that goes through your PayPal account or something similar. You can even find some locations that allow you to get your own debit or credit card with these tools, so you can separate the account entirely from the rest of your income or savings. If you pay for something through PayPal, it should just show as PayPal on your app or transactions. 

One alternative option might be to use something that allows you to buy an item now and pay later. This way, the price of the item and where it came from won’t come up on your bills until around a month or so after you’ve already made the purchase. Just make sure that you budget enough cash to pay the purchase off immediately when it arrives.  

4.   Get Rid of Ads 

Have you ever noticed that after you buy something online, you usually get a million ads from that store, or similar places selling products that are like the thing you’ve just bought? It’s no accident. These companies are using retargeting to try and get you to come and spend more money. Targeted ads based on your previous purchasing history can be a real pain in the neck when you’re trying to keep something a secret from your spouse.

One way to get rid of them is to clear out your history and cookies on the computer after you’re finished shopping, so that the browser you’re using isn’t going to send any extra information about you to the site in question. You can also look into downloading apps that will help you to block popups and ads of any kind on your website browsing trips. This will reduce your chances of your spouse seeing what you bought them. Plus, it means that you get less clutter on web pages too.