05.18.08
A VISA Card for Teens?
Friday, I received an email offering a VISA card for teens http://www.upsideclear.com/LearnMore.aspx. The thought of my 14 year old with his own credit card is pretty scary. He can barely remember to wait for his change at the pizza shop, imagine the responsibility of his own credit card!
I remember my first credit card at age 18; it was for Lord & Taylor. When I was a teen without any credit history, the easiest cards to qualify for were department stores. Usually you started with a few hundred dollars in credit so you couldn’t do too much damage but a few hundred on each card could really begin to add up every month. I had a job and I made sure I always paid my bills on time every month. After a while I was able to develop decent credit and that’s when the VISA solicitations started to arrive in my mailbox. VISA was the be all and end all; imagine, you could use one card everywhere! Well, I guess it’s not hard to predict but within a short amount of time I fell into the credit card debt trap and found myself paying off $1k across all of my cards. After roughly a year of pretty strict budgeting, I also realized minimum payments don’t get you anywhere but in a spiral!
The UPside Clear VISA card is debt free. There’s no credit line; it’s prepaid and is in your child’s name. It’s a bit like a VISA gift card but has no fees and can be reloaded online or by phone. There is no need to go back to the store that it was purchased to reload. Your child sets up an online registration and is responsible for monitoring the spending and checking the balance. You can set up a re-load schedule based on weekly allowance if you like.
As with most other parents I’m trying to teach my children by learning from my own mistakes. I don’t know, but a 14 year old carrying plastic still doesn’t sit right with me and I’m not sure that attempting to charge $22 on a $20 prepaid card is much different than trying to spend $22 in cash when there is only a $20 in your wallet. Does a prepaid card give your child more control? Do you think having a prepaid card could save your child from future credit card debt? Or could it work in reverse? I’m still not sure where I fall on this one but I’d love to hear your thoughts.