<p>cobrat - again, how would you know any adults who are bad at keeping track of their spending? We only know about own kids because some of us have access to our kid’s bank acct. I don’t even know how my siblings spend their money. You just seem to meet so many people who would disclose their financial information. I, on the other hand, have met very few people who wuld tell me anything about how they spend their money.</p>
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<ol>
<li><p>I’ve worked with colleagues who seem to love to brag about how often they replace furniture/cars/electronics/clothes…sometimes every 3 months and feel there’s something praiseworthy in participating in conspicuous consumption…even when they’re financially overextended. </p></li>
<li><p>They tended to besiege me and other colleagues who aren’t as spendy for loans to bail them out of their frivolously self-inflicted financial messes quite shamelessly. Nos…even firmly and harshly delivered for an answer fails to deter them from their incessant request for a bailout. </p></li>
<li><p>I’ve have lost count of the times in counseling older friends/family/friends of friends in financial trouble about the difference between a “need” and a “want” in an effort to help them avoid compounding their already serious financial messes.</p></li>
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<p>I am sorry, this is hard for me to believe. I wouldn’t know if my friends or colleagues were financially overextended. I also never had anyone ask me to counsel them on their finance.</p>
<p>Quote:
Some kids are very good about remembering what they’ve charged. Some are just awful, “What? I have hardly charged ANYTHING!!” And, then you show them that they charged 6 different times within 72 hours.</p>
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<p>I don’t necessarily think this is limited to adolescents/young adults. I’ve met far more than my fair share of older adults who are just as bad…if not worse about their spending/keeping track of expenses. </p>
<p>Unless you’re very lucky/sheltered…we’ve all probably know a few older adults who are like this as well. </p>
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<p>Oh I agree. My own H can be bad about remembering what’s he’s bought/spent. One Saturday he asked me what I spent $600 at Sams Club just 2 days earlier (he saw the debit on the online acct.) I said that I hadn’t been to Sams in a couple of weeks. He insisted that I must have forgotten (I wouldn’t forget spending $600…at least not within a week). Turns out HE had picked up his Rxs…some quite pricey. He had totally forgotten.</p>
<p>oldfort,</p>
<p>We have both family members and close friends who couldn’t control their budgets. Otherwise intelligent people (one was an accountant!!!) who just never got a handle on their financial lives. We had subtle requests for “just gas money” (chipped in happily), and an out-and-out request to co-sign a car note for a family member (when we couldn’t afford a car for ourselves and were leading a car-free existence). We’ve provided advice on where to get free medical and dental care, and where to get debt-management counseling. I’ve spent hours with one friend re-visiting financial strategies that would work for her if she’d only stick with them. I’ve played the tight-wad wife who controls all family finances for so long that any financial issue (even paying my mother-in-law’s electric bill out of the bank account we’ve set up specifically for her to pay that kind of thing from) gets run by me every single time. Not fun, not fun at all. Count yourself blessed that you have not had these experiences.</p>
<p>Cobrat…you have colleagues who frequently ask you to bail them out? That seems odd. What line of work are you in?</p>
<p>I can see maybe a suddenly abandoned lowly paid mom-co-worker needing a bailout, but not several fellow employees.</p>
<p>No, I don’t discuss finance with my friends and extended family members. I am the CFO in my family, but I don’t talk to people about my finance, and I don’t count other people’s money either. When my friends buy new cars, I don’t try to figure out how they could possibly afford that.</p>
<p>My apology, I didn’t think people readily shared that kind of information. I learn something new everyday on CC.</p>
<p>*1. I’ve worked with colleagues who seem to love to brag about how often they replace furniture/cars/electronics/clothes…sometimes every 3 months and feel there’s something praiseworthy in participating in conspicuous consumption…even when they’re financially overextended. </p>
<ol>
<li>They tended to besiege me and other colleagues who aren’t as spendy for loans to bail them out of their frivolously self-inflicted financial messes quite shamelessly. Nos…even firmly and harshly delivered for an answer fails to deter them from their incessant request for a bailout. *</li>
</ol>
<p>These are the two parts that I don’t understand.</p>
<p>Are you saying that the SAME PEOPLE who brag about buying “this pricey thing” or “that pricey thing” on a regular basis are the SAME PEOPLE who are asking for bailouts on a regular basis?</p>
<p>If so, the next time they say, “Hey, I just bought X,” then why not retort, “Don’t open the box, save the receipt, and when you come next week and ask for money, go return that item.”</p>
<p>Oldfort is right, SteveMA. Check your child’s credit report, if they are on your card. There it will be.</p>
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<p>Worked in a medium-sized financial company in the Greater Boston area. And no…none of them were remotely like the lowly-paid mom-coworker…more like more senior workers some years ahead of me in some other departments and even a middle-manager or two who are all making decent upper-middle class incomes.</p>
<p>I’d have far greater sympathy for colleagues like the suddenly abandoned lowly paid mom co-worker needing a bailout. Heck, I wouldn’t think anything of giving them the money rather than loaning it and trying to get them connected with friends/relatives who’d be sympathetic and inclined to help. </p>
<p>The colleagues I’m talking about are not only far removed from that situation, they’re the very types to openly disparage people in her situation for not having their upper-middle class background/incomes…and for not being able/willing to living their spendy lifestyles. </p>
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<p>Yep…they were the same people. What’s more odd was that all of them had more seniority on me…including a few middle-manager types(fortunately no reporting relationships of any kind). </p>
<p>I just told them no…and if I’m feeling really snarky…suggest that they stopped living like Donald Trump or Ferdinand/Imelda Marcos.</p>
<p>The one negative about debit cards is that some places my son used his, wouldn’t go through. We had a Buxx card through Wachovia which recently became Wells Fargo. They just stopped their Buxx program so I dumped the card. Now my son is using a visa attached to my account but I will have to explore what will work best now for college.</p>
<p>Chase bank is on the campus so I imagine they will have something they want to get us to use. I think having a low balance is the safest way to go if you get your student a charge card.</p>
<p>So I am still not clear. If your child is on your visa account, are they building a credit history in their name or not?</p>
<p>laplatinum–only if you have them signed on at a co-owner of the card. If they are just an authorized user, it won’t show up on their credit report. Also, it could really hurt them down the road if you carry a balance and they are sharing your card. Their income is a lot lower, usually, and if you have $5000 on your card that messed up their debt to income ratio. Even if you don’t have a balance, the available credit on your higher limit card can and will hurt them when they are trying to buy their first house. It’s still best to get them one of their own.</p>
<p>Lakemom–our kids’ debit cards are Visa cards and we have never had an issue with them going though. Buxx isn’t really any different than a prepaid gift card and some retailers don’t take those. Check with your bank. Most likely they have some kind of a teen checking account with little to no fees and often kids can get a low limit credit card as well.</p>
<p>Thanks SteveMA. My ATM card also acts like a debit card even though I rarely use it as one. It is also a Visa so is it your kids debit card also their ATM card?</p>
<p>I will check with the local Chase and see what they offer for charge cards with a checking acct.</p>
<p>Anybody have any experience with the Discover Student card?</p>
<p>Like I said before, this probably is because of when this was done, but I was just an authorized user and not a co-owner on my mother’s card and I received its entire credit history as my own on my report.</p>
<p>It could be different now since, like I also said, the banker at Wells Fargo was shocked to see the history there as was I after he had told me it wouldn’t show up as an authorized user. But it did show up. In fact, it still does as I was never removed as an authorized user.</p>
<p>Not trying to argue since I don’t doubt the rules have changed on this, but just pointing out that it at least used to be authorized users gained the credit history without being co-owners :)</p>
<p>Kender, could have just been one of those oversights by who ever put in your name in the main file so you were registered somehow as a co-owner to the card.</p>
<p>But I am going ask, since I already added my son to my Visa and it would save not getting another card.</p>
<p>I will also say that our AmEx card did show up on D1’s credit history, and she was only an authroized user, not a co-owner. It showed paid on time with high balance.</p>
<p>Our D opened a student credit card through our credit union right before she left for college last year. It’s a VISA card with $500 credit line, to be used for emergency (so we thought!). It may have helped that she had a checking/savings account at the credit union for years with us as custodial, and a part time job at the time. I just pulled up her credit report and she is in good standing with this one credit card so far, knock on wood. Of course, that is due to my nagging her to pay the bill on time every month. She has the money to transfer between accounts just never thinks it’s important enough to DO IT RIGHT AWAY so she won’t forget. I wish they have the auto payment option for her card.</p>
<p>DD had a savings/debit account in CA where she had accrued money from working prior to starting college.<br>
We set up three accounts -
1- a savings and a checking in our daughter’s and my name in the Boston branch of B of A
2 -A credit card in all three of our names
3 -A separate checking account for college funds (e.g. tuition, etc). </p>
<p>We have auto deposit set up to move funds monthly - 1/2 to her savings and 1/2 to her checking. She has a low balance threshold set up on her checking where she gets a message when it dips below $150. She knows that anything below $150 she has to pay back at year end - this avoids overdraft fees. By transferring 1/2 the money to her savings account, she has saved significant funds for fun trips (e.g. to NYC). Although she could transfer funds between accounts with her cell, I don’t think she bothers. We all need deterrants! </p>
<p>If you elect to set up a checking/savings, make sure you do it in their college town. There was a huge line at orientation, so try to do it at another time if possible. </p>
<p>The credit card is a mileage account, which she uses for all her flights and we use for every expense - that way she always has points to come home!</p>
<p>Our oldest is looking to buy a house. He just got the copy of his credit report in the mail and he, as a very young 20ish “kid” has an 798 credit score. His only “credit” is his $2500 student loan and his credit card. It makes a HUGE difference having a history too. He has had his card now for several years so that helps as well.</p>