Confirming above re authorized users gaining credit… Capital One did tell me that ANY use on our cc account, with follow-up on-time payment (no matter by which authorized user) would translate to positive credit info for all on the account. Still dubious about this, but we’ll see…
CC Questions:
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18 or not, don’t you have to have enough income to qualify for your own CC? Just turning 18 is not enough, right?
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Why is a debit card tied to a checking account less secure than a CC? There’s less $ in our checking account than the limit on the CC. Is it that it is not FDIC insured, or whatever? Does it make a different if it’s a VIsa debit or MasterCard debit card?
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After reading quickly, adding D17 as an authorized user on our CC seems like a no-brainer. I wish I’d done if the last time we (errr, you guys) discussed this. What are the downsides (besides misuse by kid)?
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A debit card on a checking/savings account does nothing for building credit history?
Congrats @Dave_N. Sounds like a fruitful weekend.
@itsgettingreal17 Just hope sabotage doesn’t kick in! She’s done great! (People still use gas cards? LOL)
@DMV301 & @showmetheMAC – I pulled my older son’s credit report this summer. I cannot recall why—but used the one free per year. Was pleasantly surprised to see perhaps 24 months of credit history for his card linked to my account. The report went back further than 24 months, but the detail reported changed for the older period. His own card also appeared with the limited months of history reported.
The first card appears as ‘Authorized Account’ and the second one as ‘Individual Account’.
The credit report did not include a credit score, but he can see that by clicking on a link on his online banking.
@showmetheMAC --I cannot answer your questions about debit cards as I avoid them. I understand that the protections are stronger than they used to be, with perhaps the lingering glitch being having to wait for money to be refunded to account after unauthorized activity, but I am standing firm in my use of CC and avoiding debit cards. But, I am extreme, and also have had a freeze on my credit for nearly ten years. No identity theft, just prudent/wary.
Q#1—don’t know the answer here either. Older son applied at 19 with summer earnings only. Card had $1000 limit. He has had a summer job since summer after 10th grade but I do not know what questions were asked as he handled the application himself over the phone.
Q#2—I can’t imagine that there is any difference of Visa vs MC.
@showmetheMAC – re debit card v credit card risks: Like @CT1417, we are averse to debit card usage generally (but particularly when abroad). Once someone gets your card number and PIN, they can quickly rack up charges on your account and get away with those. Credit cards generally have more safeguards built in, and we certainly have benefitted from their fraud-protection services on more than one occasion, so we prefer them over debit cards. We have also very recently had an identity theft scare and are trying to be extra vigilant about these matters.
And, no, I don’t think a debit card does much to build one’s credit, though I’m no expert.
Q#1
I think college students can get credit cards that are directly marketed to them by showing their student ids regardless of income. I am pretty sure that is how I got my first one.
More bragging progress! After an entire Thanksgiving weekend of morose refusal to do anything college app-related, D17 had a sudden burst of energy this afternoon and finished the four (yes, four!) Alabama University Fellows essays,* so she’s now submitted that, and then she looked at Alabama’s horribly-named Computer-Based Honors application (due 15 December) and thought it looked quite doable, too—if nothing else, the essay prompt looks more interesting.
Also, in reviewing applications she realized she was done with Muhlenberg’s application, so she said to go ahead and submit it, even though she’s uninterested in applying early decision. (Of course, in an interesting bit of marketing strategy, their ED and RD deadlines are identical: 15 February.)
So now she only has three applications remaining, all of which have deadlines on or after 15 January (plus the CBH program, if she decides to apply to it).
- She said all four prompts were horrible, and the first bar to entering the University Fellows program is, it appears, having the patience and fortitude to be able to slog through that bit of unpleasantness.
@DMV301 Why are you worried about using Debit card oversea’s. Where is she going? If it’s most of EU Europe they are honestly more secure with their credit/debit cards then we are here. They would in fact prefer a Credit Card with pin & chip. Rather than pin & signature. Not sure about other places. I’d prefer to have whomever have at least a 2nd form of $$.
And I still don’t understand the idea that CC are more secure since in this country they don’t have a pin. Pin makes it more secure in many ways. With a CC you steal or even guess the number and you can start charging. (But I guess since it’s not your money that they are taking out…) We just didn’t like the idea of kids starting off by getting themselves in a lot of debt with CC. I knew many kids when I was in college, get a first CC and quickly spend to the limit. They have very little money in the account, so there really isn’t much to steal.
QOTD: both my daughters have had debit cards on their checking accounts for years. When my older D went off to college I had her added as an authorized signer on one card that I don’t use that often. She gets a certain amount of money transferred automatically into her checking account every month and that’s her allowance for fun and incidentals like toiletries etc. The credit card is only for (a) big purchases that her regular allowance doesn’t cover, like textbooks and plane tickets home, and (b) emergencies. It has worked out very well for us. Don’t know if she’s officially building her own credit history – probably not since I don’t remember giving out her social security number in order to have her added as an authorized signer.
DS finished his UC applications tonight! Yay. That will take him from 2 to 7 applications with one submit button.
One problem: He (and I) tried a few things to get either a blank line between paragraphs or an indent, and haven't found a solution yet? We don't see blank lines in the "View Application" preview. Any ideas for the UC application essays?
Edited: Never mind about the paragraph breaks. We noticed that some paragraphs were correctly spaced in his “Additional Comments” section. Copying that invisible character and pasting it into the other essays fixed the problem. Odd because they both came from Google Docs.
Update on my D’17: hit “submit” on the UC application this weekend. So now she has her UC app and her Cal Poly SLO app submitted. The Common App is completed except for the essays (I know, I know, that’s like saying “I’m all finished with my Ph.D. except for the dissertation”). She’s probably going to take one of her UC essays and expand on it for her main Common App essay. It’s probably the shorter school-specific essays that are going to give her the most grief. She hates answering questions like “Why do you want to attend School X?”
She has been struggling with a serious lack of motivation/problem with procrastination all semester. I think a lot of students go through this – they’ve been driving themselves so hard for so many years, and suddenly it all just seems not worth doing anymore. Intellectually she knows it’s worth doing and that it will affect her college choices, but when she’s actually sitting at her computer trying to get work done, it’s so much easier to just look at videos of cats instead.
QOTD - D has a debit card linked to her bank account. I gave her a CC as an authorized user on my CC the first time she went away to a summer program. CCs are better than debit cards because when there is fraud you just never pay the charge. With a debit card, the fraudulent charge has been taken out of your account and you have to wait to have the money returned to you.
@Ynotgo congrats to your S on submitting those! I struggled with that exact same problem when we were trying to submit my D’s and I was very OCD about how I thought that there really should be indents at the beginnings of paragraphs and if not, at least a space between paragraphs. Couldn’t get either to work for a while but finally did something I think it was hitting return at the beginning of the new paragraph instead of the end of the old that got the space between paragraphs to stick! I even called the UC app people about it and they told me some people had already called about that (and this was near the beginning of the month) and that we shouldn’t worry as the content was what mattered but I was still determined to get that space in there - glad you figured it out too!
QOTD: credit/debit cards. I think I mentioned this a while back, but both girls have had debit cards since they were 14. On the 15th of every month H replenishes it with $100. At first the kids tended to burn through their money and buy a lot of stupid stuff on amazon. After a year or so of that, running out of money constantly, and having to go through the hassle of sending stuff back to Amazon if they wanted their money back (because Mom was NOT going to do it for them), they learned how to budget and spend a lot more wisely.
Actually, D17 has always been good with budgeting, it was D18 that was the spendthrift for a while. But they’re both good about it now, and D17 actually has about $500 saved in her debit account. D18 doesn’t run out of money anymore.
They also have one of my credit cards, and it’s just for Publix, fuel, and submitting apps. They are super good about sticking with that.
This week on board the ship they both had unlimited charging through our credit card on their room keys, and both of them bought candy and some ice cream, and that was it for the seven days. We just said ‘don’t go crazy with the cards’ and they understood what that meant. We were (and are) very proud of them for being so reasonable about money and understanding debt.
Checked the portals, UMD says all good (although the teacher’s LOR is listed as 11/15). NEU turns out she was trying to access the wrong portal, and they emailed her back and said go to this link to check the portal. Dummy test, lol.
She’s working on the Blount and the CBHP for UA, and is getting a lot of freakouts from her friends over their essays.
We don’t get our kids CC. Our oldest bought a house with no credit history. He called Dave Ramsey’s network and they put him in touch with lenders that work with people with no credit history. (He and his wife paid for everything in cash, including buying cars.) They ended up with an incredibly low interest rate. And they still pay cash for everything (except the house.)
Our oldest dd worked at Kohl’s while she was going to school. She got a Kohl’s credit card. She had no problems gettting a low interest rate through our credit union when she bought her first car.
My D was added to my CC when she was 18, in case she needed to get gas or for emergencies.
In college she uses her debit card for spending money, I add funds to her student ID for laundry money, and she applied for her first CC at age 19 and uses it for food (first year she had a meal plan, sophomore year she lives in an apt).
Our debit Master Cards are Chip and Pin so I feel quite safe with them.
@MotherOfDragons I would have been livid about the smoking. We are verandah junkies and not being able to be out there would really impact a trip for us, and I’ve zero desire for an inside cabin. We’ve not had an issue personally, not sure if it was the cruise line or just luck as I know your experience is not uncommon. It still sounds like a lovely trip!
D is all done with her essays, and I was reading them last night… My impression…I couldn’t tell those schools apart,
"Unlike other universities, X provides xxx and yyy which have been my interest since early childhood.
I have done aaaa in xxx, examples, experiences, etc
and bbbb in yyy. Examples, experiences, etc.
Cue in specifics of the X school…which link to aaaa/xxx, bbbb/yyy.
Cue fun facts and clubs about X school which link to her personality/interests "
The essays are good, but not great. How to put the WOW factor in?? And can you tell she is applying engineering? 
I talked to D about that. D said "all the schools thought they are unique, and that is why I tailor to them. ". At least D got the messages the schools are selling. The marketing money is not wasted on D.
How to put the WOW factor in why X school essays?
@SincererLove – I know exactly what you mean and felt the same when reviewing my son’s essays for fifth school yesterday. He is applying theoretical CS & math, so perhaps the same issue as Engineering. I do think schools want to see that the applicant has taken the time to see herself on campus. Hopefully neither of our children is wrong!
Ohio State active shooter. Praying for them. So horrifying and sad.
Oh no!!!