It’s important to build solid credit because your life can be difficult without it. To help your adult child establish credit, have them sign up for a low-limit credit card.
Photo by CUNY Academic Commons
Forbes offers a few different tips for helping uni students build credit, and here’s one they suggest:
Have your child open a credit card — but have the bill sent to your house….You can help them by monitoring their credit card usage. Start with a low-limit card that can also earn them reward points and be sure to pay it off in full to avoid those high interest charges.
There are without actually using a card. Eventually, it pays to learn to use credit responsibly, but this is a decent option when you’re just starting out.
For more detail, head to their full post at the link below.
3 Financial Tips For Parents Sending Students Off To College [Forbes]
Comments
6 responses to “Help Your University-Age Child Build Credit With A Low-Limit Card”
Blah blah blah. Yet another article crossposted from Lifehacker US with little to no relevancy in Australia. Up your game, Lifehacker AU. Seriously.
My parents actually gave me this same advice when I started uni, so I don’t see how it’s irrelevant.
You’ll also find we don’t have many staff on at 3pm on a Sunday afternoon, so you will tend to see more US articles over the weekend. Luckily you’ve got plenty of Aussie stories to look forward to over the week! 🙂
I think what Cameroooon is referring to is that in Australia good credit ratings isn’t a thing. Credit is based off having a bad credit ratings i.e. late payments on previous borrowing and your income and asset level.
Spot on, Morty.
I change appreciate the lack of staff contributing to bad/irrelevant stories on a Sunday, Hayley… but can you explain why the quality of journalism is so bad every other day of the week? ?
If there aren’t that many staff at 3pm on a Sunday afternoon Hayley then don’t use articles from Lifehacker.com as a filler for the AU version. If it is irrelevant to Australia than it should stay on Lifehacker.com.
This isn’t relevant to Australian readers.
By the time my child is “university-age” they will have been working for nearly 4 years.
I will be teaching them the importance of money management well before that!
Agreed. When I was studying in the States I would have totally agreed with Jake nut since moving to Australia this article is definitely irrelevant. Why wasn’t this article vetted properly before copying it wholesale from Lifehacker.com?
So people old enough to go to college (it’s an American article after all) cannot be trusted with money so their parents should open their mail and monitor their credit cards. Wow just wow