How to Open a Separate Bank Account and Credit Card

July 9, 2021 6:57 PM

A few years back my parents added me to all their bank accounts and credit cards (and vice versa) so that in the event of sudden death or some other emergency we could easily access everything without going through probate or whatever. I would now like to open a second, private savings account along with an additional credit card so I can save and pay for a special cosmetic procedure. How do I do that without alerting my parents?

Bear with me on this one because my knowledge of banking related stuff is iffy.

Essentially, my worry is that if I open a new account and credit card at any bank, those accounts will show up if my dad pulls a credit report from Experian or something. I also don't know whether me opening an account at my same primary bank (Chase) will show up in my account (which my parents can see) or if I can make it under a completely separate login. It would be nice to keep everything at Chase for convenience, but if I have to I guess I can go somewhere else so long as the credit card has good financing options. The procedure I want is expensive and will take time to pay off.

Am I correct in my assumptions? Is there a way to do this privately?

posted by Hermione Granger to Work & Money (19 answers total)

I can't speak to Chase, but I just opened up a personal account for checking and savings at a local credit union, at the same time my wife and I opened a new joint account for family bills (we do yours/mine/ours, and I was shifting away from a bank I don't like ethically). Not only was my personal account not visible from our joint account, there's no way their system could allow one login to access both the personal and joint accounts, which is frustrating in our case and desirable in your case. They also let me create a verbal password for phone access -- not clear if this is universal now or my specific CU, but that would be an extra layer of security to prevent your parents from snooping into the details of your account.

For optimal operational security in your case, I'd go to a separate bank or credit union. In theory someone not on your account shouldn't be able to get info about it, but if your father happens to be friendly with the tellers or something, they might "do a favor" and give him info on his child's account, which is what you want to avoid here. I don't know if this is a realistic threat today but it's totally the type of social engineering that might've worked 10-15 years ago, at least.

If your threat model includes your parent pulling a credit report on you (which they shouldn't be able to do, I think, but I guess they have all the information you'd use to authenticate yourself), you're kinda hosed though -- debt like a credit card is going to show up on a credit report, including payment history and max balance. You might be able to freeze your credit to prevent people from pulling a credit report without additional info? I don't know, I haven't had to do this. A new account for you shouldn't show up on his credit report, though.
posted by Alterscape at 7:15 PM on July 9, 2021 [1 favorite]

You're in the United States, yes? Your parents can only see what they have access to, and access is on an account-by-account basis, with one exception. If you gave them your account password (i.e., they can log in as you), then they will be able to see any account you open. If you're an authorized user on their cards and a joint account holder on their deposit accounts, they shouldn't be able to see any accounts opened by you individually. However, if it's very important for you to be sure of this, you should confirm specifically with the bank. If it's ultra important, use another bank. In none of these circumstances should new accounts opened by you alone appear on your father's credit report, nor, in the ordinary course, should your parents be able to pull a credit report on you without your consent. (If you are being closely surveilled, note that it may be possible for them to find some sort of investigator who will be willing to break the law to pull the report. It doesn't sound like you're in that kind of situation, but something to be aware of.)
posted by praemunire at 7:18 PM on July 9, 2021 [2 favorites]

And, on failure to think through before posting: you may want to ask the mods to anonymize this, if you think there's any chance your parents or other folks in their orbit might connect your MeFi handle to your real identity based on your question history. It's not clear if your threat model here is "awkward conversation with parents" or "threat of physical harm," but the closer you are to the latter, the stronger this recommendation is.
posted by Alterscape at 7:18 PM on July 9, 2021

Response by poster: No worries, my dad is not that extreme, and wouldn't pull my credit report without my express permission. I really appreciate the concern, though. I'm concerned about what he can see when he looks up his stuff since I don't want to answer his questions about why I would want a separate secret account.
posted by Hermione Granger at 7:27 PM on July 9, 2021

Just to offer a counterpoint, a decade or so ago, my family had some mixups because we were all at the same bank, we had the same address in our history, and some of us were on other people's accounts for exactly the reason you describe. It was basically a software glitch, but if you want to be extra careful, opening an account at totally separate institution is probably safest.

You can always close the account later if you want to simplify, once you hit your savings goal!
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 7:44 PM on July 9, 2021 [2 favorites]

In that case, an account solely in your own name at another bank/credit union to prevent social engineering or software screwups like Blue Jello Elf describes should be about as deniable as it is possible to be without lawyers.

One other thought: Most accounts require an initial deposit to open, and you should fund the new account in cash, rather than writing a check or doing an electronic transfer from one of your existing accounts to avoid something showing up in your statement on the joint account. For a basic savings account at a big bank, I'm guessing it's like $25-$100 but I'm not sure. If you choose to open an account with a higher initial balance requirement (for instance, an interest-bearing checking account we opened required a significant minimum balance), you may need to withdraw money at an ATM over the course of several days/weeks. In that case, I'd call Chase to find out their daily/weekly ATM limits and not go near them, because my banks have called me to verify a large cash withdrawal (in my case, > $500), and it's not clear who they'd call in the case of a joint account.

How are you planning to get money into the new account to pay off the credit card? You can set up a direct deposit to split between your current account and your new one, but if someone cared to look at your statements, they'd then see that your direct deposits into the old/shared account got smaller. I'm not sure how you get around that, unless you happen to get a raise the same pay period you change your direct deposit, and don't tell anyone about it.

Also, since nobody actually answered your question about how to open the account: just walk into a branch with a photo ID and some cash, and tell them you want to open an account. It will probably take about half an hour in paperwork, maybe less.

You may want to look at resources for people at higher risk (eg: people working to escape domestic violence, etc) since the operational security recommendations for those people should be as good or better than you need based on what you describe.
posted by Alterscape at 7:51 PM on July 9, 2021 [3 favorites]

Sometimes the best way to keep secret is to tell the secret. Consider telling your parents that you want to be more independent with your finances, and so you are removing their access to your accounts. Please don't do that if it would compromise your safety. However sometimes we keep secrets to try to assuage another person's anxiety, but dealing with the initial anxiety might be easier than dealing with the massive freakout that will happen when they discover the secret accounts.
posted by medusa at 8:43 PM on July 9, 2021 [9 favorites]

I can tell you that Chase specifically merged accounts I had under two separate names (but same SSN) that initially had two different login IDs together as far as online banking without me asking them to.

if my dad pulls a credit report from Experian

Pretty much any account you open will show up on a credit report if it came to that. But it won't show how much is in it, so you could always say something like it was your account for saving for holiday presents or whatever if they did find out about them.
posted by Candleman at 8:52 PM on July 9, 2021

Chase bank. I had checking/savings, credit cards, a mortgage for 20+ years. Shut down checking/savings and credit cards 2008, kept the mortgage. Fast fwd to 2017, I opened a Chase credit card (Amazon VISA, run through Chase) and it showed up alongside mortgage. I refinanced 2019, took the mortgage to another institution; the old Chase mortgage account still shows up when I open the credit card account.

Why they do this I do not know. Or care, just a data point for you I guess. If I had to guess I'd say it's just bad programming, and no one has made noise about it.

Go to different institution than you are currently with, for sure. Picture ID, handful of cash, 30 minutes, should be on your way.

Thx for reminder -- my older sister is on my bank account and I need to change that, as her health has taken a huge dive, and I've a trusted, healthy, younger friend here in ATX who I want to put on any/all accounts.
posted by dancestoblue at 9:10 PM on July 9, 2021 [2 favorites]

Nthing that your best bet is to do this at a different bank/credit union than the account you share with your family to reduce the chance of any inadvertent disclosures. Even if you weren't getting this procedure done, it is a very good idea to have a separate account that your family can't see or access.

As for credit reports, you can request a security freeze on all of your credit reports for free; I highly recommend you do that as it is a good line of defense against identity theft, and it will prevent anyone who doesn't have the unfreeze pin/account the ability to pull a report without your knowledge.
posted by Aleyn at 2:03 AM on July 10, 2021 [3 favorites]

Yeah, most (but not all) of our Chase stuff shows up in one place, and I would avoid opening an account at the same bank everything else is under.

There's nothing wrong with having your own private finances, it's none of their business and you shouldn't have to disclose or justify it, but if you do you can tell them that all the financial advice aimed at (your generation) says to have at least two different banks in case of ransomware, climate emergencies, identity theft etc. People do this on purpose all the time.
posted by Lyn Never at 9:43 AM on July 10, 2021

If you want to open an account with an online only bank (they have a lot of benefits imo) you can set up a PayPal account and use that to move money from your old account into the new one. Just link both accounts to your PayPal, it’ll take a few days for the money to move but there shouldn’t be any fees. If your parents ask why you moved a bunch of money into PayPal you can say you’re paying for an online thing that only takes PayPal (you’d know the best item to tell them you bought but personally I’d say an online course)
posted by 100kb at 10:12 AM on July 10, 2021

Was coming here to also suggest an online bank as 100kb says. I have a Discover account which was easy to set up, can link to a credit card, and is 100% online but the only thing I had to be careful about was getting postal mail from them. If you live with your parents I'd think about this angle, there are very likely online banks which will never send you postal mail. Nerdwallet's got some suggestions. I would probably not go with another account at Chase, too easy for it to go sideways.

Also, that said, if your dad is pulling your credit reports, your credit cards will show up on it but it looks like that is not a major concern. The other concern would be taxes. If you have an account that earns interest, even a little bit, it will generate a tax form, so if your parents are involved with your taxes, they would see this.

But yes, if you have a decent relationship with your folks I would strongly consider just telling them you want a (small) personal account and are going to set it up and politely and firmly resist their attempts at getting you to share it all with them. While it may make sense to have each other as backups on your bank accounts, it should also be fine to NOT have them as backups if you don't want them to. Around here people do what has been suggested above, they have a private account for saving for presents or whatever.
posted by jessamyn at 10:26 AM on July 10, 2021 [1 favorite]

One thing to be careful with "online banks" is to make sure that they're actually a bank as you may have fewer protections/recourse if something goes wrong with a fintech provider. This Ars Technica article calls out issues with Chime in particular.
posted by Aleyn at 3:29 PM on July 10, 2021

Banking has privacy laws that unless you're underage and not eligible for your own account, your parents would NOT know about your account at all.

All you really need to do is head into the bank and say "I want to open a ____ account", hand over ID, and deposit what you want into the account, sign some documents, read some disclaimers, and that's it. Your debit card and if you want any, paper checks, will arrive in the mail. You MAY be able to have the card delivered to the bank to be picked up by you later, but that may depend on bank policy.
posted by kschang at 3:51 PM on July 10, 2021

You're going to need a mailing address, in my experience helping a friend open a secret account. Although the bank was sympathetic, they said there was one letter that needed to be mailed before they could go entirely electronic. This was in the US. I don't know if all banks have this policy.
posted by The corpse in the library at 5:31 PM on July 10, 2021 [2 favorites]

Just want to add that some institutions require passports as the photo ID. About two years ago, I was unable to be added to one of my dad’s credit union accounts because my ID was a drivers’s license from California and not a passport. Good luck!
posted by Bella Donna at 10:35 PM on July 10, 2021

I just want to clarify something, because I'm seeing some confusion in the replies here. It's true that if your father pulls your credit report he could see this bank account (although if you reach a point where he's running credit checks on you, the privacy ship has largely sailed anyway). What I think you're asking is if your joint account means that he'll see your other accounts when he pulls his own report. The answer there is no! Bank accounts aren't transitive that way, and we would get no information that doesn't relate to him directly.
posted by Ragged Richard at 10:12 AM on July 12, 2021

There’s a lot of misinformation here. Checking accounts do not show up on your credit reports. Credit cards do.
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 6:05 PM on October 1, 2021