Dear Moneyist,
My mother celebrates a unequivocally special birthday subsequent week. She has asked for a unequivocally costly watch for a present. we intend to buy it on Amazon. I’ve been selling on Amazon for roughly dual decades and, recently, I’ve beheld that we have accrued 45,000 rewards points on a site that has a financial value of $320, that would roughly compensate for a watch.
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I would like to request these points to shopping a watch rather than raid my assets account, though we don’t wish her to learn we am regulating this form of remuneration as she competence consider I’m inexpensive and that such a gesticulate risks devaluing her birthday celebration. My mother and we share a Amazon comment and we have no suspicion if she knows about a rewards points. we don’t wish to ask her.
But we would like to ask you: What should we do?
Robert Gold
Dear Robert,
At initial we suspicion this was a slam-dunk! But on mature reflection, it’s a wily one. On a one hand, we are regulating corner supports for this watch and we and your mother are a team. On a other hand, we expected have some apart supports for guilty pleasures — some of that could be in a form of prerogative points. Does it matter most if we use these corner points from your Amazon credit card for your wife’s birthday gift?
Halfway by essay that question, we done a call: Yes, it does. There is a frisson regulating points for oppulance equipment or incentive purchases. If we dull your corner Amazon awards account, we dispossess your mother of that tiny pleasure. Also, it’s a gift, so your mother unequivocally shouldn’t spend some of her possess prerogative points on her possess present.
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The Moneyologist Facebook Group is divided. Paul Forster writes: “Pay income for a watch and use a points for something for a home or something that you’ll share.” Monica Langlois adds: “I consider she’ll know if we confirm to use a points.” And Robert Ross adds: “Remember a ‘Seinfeld’ part with a cashmere sweater with a red dot? It’ll go like that.” (That is, not well.)
If we do use a Amazon rewards points for a watch, as some people on a Moneyist Facebook Group suggest, we would have to tell her. There is no approach around that. How would we feel if she found out and we had not told her? There’s your answer. If she has entrance to this account, she will see a squeeze in a comment history, and it could outcome in a unequivocally ungainly birthday dinner.
Do we have questions about inheritance, tipping, weddings, family feuds, friends or any wily issues relating to manners and money? Send them to MarketWatch’s Moneyist and greatfully embody a state where we live (no full names will be used).
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Hello there, MarketWatchers. Check out the Moneyist private Facebook group, where we demeanour for answers to life’s thorniest income issues. Readers write in to me with all sorts of dilemmas: inheritance, wills, divorce, tipping, gifting. we mostly speak to lawyers, accountants, financial advisers and other experts, in further to charity my possess thoughts. we accept some-more letters than we could ever answer, so I’ll be bringing all of that superintendence — including some we competence not see in these columns — to this group. Post your questions, tell me what we wish to know some-more about, or import in on a latest Moneyist columns.
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Quentin Fottrell is MarketWatch’s personal-finance editor and The Moneyist columnist for MarketWatch. You can follow him on Twitter @quantanamo.
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