Parents Trusting Children With Credit Cards At Earlier Age, Experts Say

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — Did you have a credit card when you were a kid? Probably not, but that’s not the case with today’s children. It looks like more parents are trusting their children with plastic at an early age, according to a new report from creditcards.com.

Experts say there are some pros and cons to the trend.

Underage children can’t apply for their own credit cards.

So parents add them as authorized users to their accounts — which means kids could make unauthorized purchases and therefore ruin their parents’ credit.

On the plus side, experts say it gives kids a head start building their credit and learning how to manage their finances.