The Real: “Should kids have a debit/credit card?”

[stewie_e]

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The panel on The Real (Adrienne Houghton, Loni Love, Jeannie Mai, and Tamera Mowry-Housley) discuss if kids should get a debit or credit card and when is the appropriate age to give them one. Loni feels debit cards are more appropriate while Tamera thinks 14 is a good age for a credit card with a set limit. Adrienne adds that it’s important to

Comments

[sandstorm]

My CC limit is only 500$.

I need to pay it down...if I have an emergency over 500$ at this point in my life, we're in trouble.

[tucker]

I got a debit card when I was 11 and I thought it was the COOLEST thing

then I tried to show off to my friends and did a balance check at an atm (it was an atm where I banked by the way! not even a different banks atm) and got a $1.50 fee just for checking my balance and was like oh this sucks

[stewie_e]

I had no idea atm’s charged to check a balance. Wtf.

[tucker]

this was 2001-ish so hopefully it's changed since then! I don't think they would charge you anymore as long as you are using your own banks atm, if you use a different banks atm to check your balance then yeah you might still get a charge

[shittysoup]

[drunkenclaudius]

Debit cards aren't really a thing where I live, so I know enough people who don't have one in their twenties lol (I only use mine on vacation tbh)

But I had a debit card at like age 10, which is fine. Can't go into debt with them anyway here until you're an adult

[vintage_boom]

debit card for their allowance/spending money/their own job pay, sure. we're moving cashless so it makes sense to just to an e-transfer than hand over cash each week.

credit card, absolutely not. credit cards with high limits should have an age limit/some other perimeter on them so people don't perpetuate the debt cycle. no 18/19 year old should have 10K in credit available to them, speaking as a one of those 19 year olds.

[vintage_boom]

also I had both money management education + entrepreneurship in school and it ultimately didn't do shit for me because it's high school and nothings real in high school lol

[yeezus_christ]

lol!--this!

in junior high, homeroom was always a free period so whoever your homeroom teacher was could set their own curriculum or treat it as a study period.

my 8th grade homeroom teacher made monday-thursday a study period, but on friday we would play the stock market. we started off with i think $50 and we would choose stocks and follow them throughout the school year and could buy, sell and trade with her acting as the broker which included brokerage fees.

over the course of the school year she explained credit cards, stocks, loans, bonds, retirement accounts, interest rates, setting a budget, the importance of making timely payments on credit cards and loans, liquidating assets and more.

how much of that shit do you think i carried into high school?

[piratesswoop]

Debit card only. Start off with those visa gift cards and then help them open their own account. teach them about saving and spending, interest etc. Giving a teenager a credit card when they don’t have any source of income is just asking for a disaster to happen.