Help my Son Build His Credit - Young Adult

[FirstHomeBuyer]

Hi Everyone,

My Son is a young adult and I want to help him build his credit history.   I have excellent credit 826-last time I checked.   If I request a credit card for him from one of my credit card company will that help him establish his credit history?  Or should he get a Secure Card?  

I'm hoping with my excellent credit history he will benefit more by getting the credit card from me, instead of a secure card.

Thanks you everyone for your feedback and recommendation. Greatly appreciated. 

[ddemari]

How old is your son? Is he under 18 or 21? When I was 16 I had my mom who has perfect credit open a discover card and auto user me on it, she also did the same with old navy (cause I worked there) haha. By 18, on my 18th bday to be exact I applied on the phone for an amex blue card and was approved for my first card with SL of $1000.00.

That was over 10 years ago though. I think if your son is old enough to get his own card, have him try the cap1 prequal. 

[EW800]

I have a college-age daughter.  Right out of high school she picked up a credit card from US Bank, who gave her a very low $500 limit.  She then got a small student loan and has had a perfect payment history on both accounts.  As I had a lot of chats with her about credit, we decided to have her as an AU on a Capital One account and AmEx account that I have - both open for many years and have a perfect history.  We then waited about six months for everything to settle from the AU additions and she then applied for CapOne QS.  As she applied, I told her to expect a beginning CL of about $1,000.  To my surprise, she was granted a $10K starting CL!  i really had to have a talk with her then.  She seems to be very responsible, however I was a bit concerned about a very young person having a $10K limit.  It has been about a year now since she got the CapOne QS and has not charged more than a couple of hundred dollars a month, paying it off in full each month.  So far so good.  

With the starting US Bank card, small student loan, two AU accounts and then the CapOne QS on her own, her scores are excellent.  We ran a 3B report on her a couple of months ago and she is in the 775 to 795 range across all FICO models.  Very impressive for such a young person, I believe.  

There are people within this forum that know better than I do, however I would absolutely think that adding your son as an AU to perfect history accounts would certainly hep him.  

[notpaul]

It will definitely help. Three months after doing this our mailbox gets tons of prequalify offers....and they are not for me

[takeshi74]

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@FirstHomeBuyer wrote:

My Son is a young adult and I want to help him build his credit history.   I have excellent credit 826-last time I checked.   If I request a credit card for him from one of my credit card company will that help him establish his credit history?  Or should he get a Secure Card?   

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They're not mutually exclusive.  Being an AU can help but he will need to build his own tradelines at some point.  A credit union with more lax approval criteria could also be an option for building his own tradelines.

FYI - if you have concerns about his responsbility you can make him an AU and not give him the card.  He'll still get the benefit* but there wouldn't be the risk.

*Benefit will depend on the usual factors.  A card with postiive payment history, low revolving utilization and greater age will generally help while negative payment history, high utilization and low age will generally not help or not help as much.