Possibly, but she won’t be 18 for a few more years yet and all kinds of things can change between no and then. It’s just something I plan to do and here and there look into it.
I feel a bit bad when kids first start renting and have all kinds of issues finding someone who will lease to them, trying to get a car, trying to get a credit card all because they have no credit history, especially when (assuming you’re a financially responsible parent) it’s so easy to fix.
Actually, some prospective employers run your credit. I’m not sure why; I don’t know if they think that people with a lot of debt are more likely to steal, or that people with debt or bad credit are a security risk of some sort. Or maybe they just don’t want creditors calling you at work.
Also, if you want to rent an apartment, they run your credit. I hope I don’t have to move any time soon, but stuff happens. Our last place was a place we thought we’d be for a long time, but then it got sold, and the new landlords were pretty shady. I don’t want to go into detail, but we decided we needed to get out. So suddenly we found ourselves moving. Fortunately, our credit was good enough to get into pretty much any place we wanted. It isn’t perfect, so there might have been places it would have kept us out of, but we probably couldn’t have afforded them anyway.
Textual mentioned checking out nerdwallet and some other cites, but even just going to Chase . com or CaptialOne or Amex would get you plenty of options, find the one that works best for you.
Back when I had debt, I used every trick in the book to keep my interest rate down. Calling every few months to get it lowered, transferring the balance between cards when they’d run ‘no interest on balance transfer’ specials probably a few other things.
OTOH, know that I have no debt, I couldn’t even tell you what my interest rate is, it doesn’t matter, now I focus on rewards. Amazon is 5% back on all (most) Amazon purchases and 1% on everything else. Chase is 1% on everything and 5% on rotating categories. Amex runs all kinds of odd deals on points and I just check their site every few days.
Oh, and while we’re at it, Ebates has been pretty good at handing you a few percent back as well.
I never quite understood that either. I think you’re right in that if you have loads of debt, you’re more likely to steal or at the very least you shouldn’t work in departments that would go hand in hand with being good with money.
Personally, I’ve never quite liked that. I recall when my parents fired their accountant because he (personally) declared bankruptcy. In their mind if he can’t handle his own finances, they didn’t want him handling theirs. OTOH, just because you screw up your own, doesn’t mean you don’t know how to handle them properly. And who knows, maybe he got hit with a large medical bill or an expensive divorce.
That’s cool. And for some more info, I just did a quick search online, and there are a lot of cards that let you add someone under 18 as an authorized user.
This is very false. Nowadays Insurance companies and even potential jobs check your credit score to see what you rate is or whether you will get that job.
That’s what happens when you were in the same job for 15 years - when I switched, there were no credit reports. Even longer since I’ve rented, and that was private.
But as I said, I’m all in favor of building credit using cards responsibly. Even without employment checks, you never know when you are going to need credit.
I wonder what the default credit score is?
Employers don’t check your credit score.
Ok, they check your credit report.
I think many people use ‘credit score’ and ‘credit report’ interchangeably. And considering many places don’t even use an actual FICO score, maybe the potential employer creates their own score.
When I was being assigned a purchasing card at work, I had to allow my employer access to my credit report first too.