Tech Tuesday: What do you do about family accounts?

Hi y’all, I want to know how you navigate your way around shared accounts in different situations.

As I was trying to create a spotify playlist for you for next week’s Tech Tuesday post, I ran into some issues with being unable to access the family account. Grrr. Having been married almost a decade, it seems that we have several yours-mine-ours scenarios in which we duplicate accounts or must log in as each other. I wonder what other families do for books, movies, shopping, banking, etc.

Calendaring, we got handled. But everything else? Hmmm.

We have a shared email account that we use for school communication and most shopping sites. Between juggling our legacy (singleton) accounts and weird system mergers (like when Amazon ate Audible), things are rather murky in other areas:

For our schedules, we each have google calendar and a shared family view. Each of the kids’ schools uses it too, so I have no complaints
On iTunes, we are my husband. We both know his username and our super-secret password. Otherwise, we’d have to re-purchase every song, movie, and app. No thanks.
On Amazon, I am prime, and the primary shopper. We are each ourselves for purchasing stuff; however on kindle and, now, audible, we are my husband. I do not know the log in info so I’m always asking him to do it; Kindle allows us to have various devices that he has to manage.
On netflix, we used to be individuals until some weird “upgrade” made his account dominant. Luckily, I know the password.
On Hulu-plus, we are him and I don’t know how to log in.
On Paypal, we are HIM and other banking sites, we are each ourselves.

Basically, even though I learned how to program our family VCR in second grade, I can barely watch TV without my husband’s help.

There has to be a better way. Have you figured it out?

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RookieMom Heather

RookieMoms co-founder & mom to 3 boys in Berkeley, CA. Bossy big sister and project manager turned blogger. Find me on my other site on 510families.com or hiding in my minivan eating dark chocolate.

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