Good Credit Cards for a Teenager

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Maria Enamoto from Consumer Credit Counseling Services and today we are going to discuss if it is good for a teenager to have a credit card. If you are thinking, if you have a teenager, and you are thinking about giving him or her a credit card, first thing that you need to check is if they have any money management skills. If they have learned this at school or if they are familiar on making a budget or balancing the check book for example. This are the main things they need to know before jumping into the credit card world. So a good thing if you are assured that they haven't received the skills at school or at home, the first thing probably will be to train them on that. To train them on how to use their own money. And you can check it with them too. It can be like in cash or you can give them like a debit card that they can, that you can control with them. Once you know that they are prepared and they are responsible on the way they use their money, probably you can think of giving them a credit card. But this credit card it's not recommendable if you do an extension of your own credit card. Because if they for some reason lose it, okay, or they start using it without control, they are going to access a higher limit. So a good way to for a reason to have a credit card will be to have one prepaid card that you can refund or you can reload every so period of time so you have control of the money that they are using. Or another one will be to have like a debit card linked to a checking account that they, that you can put funds in. This way you're going to be able to receive the statements and check on when they are using the money. Or by the end of the month, you can check with them if they have spend more of what their income was. In this case, the money was that was available for them. This way you're going to make them be responsible and prepare them for the future. And avoiding them being into high credit card debts."