by Deborah Coshun

Created on: November 22, 2011

No! No!  Kids should not have credit cards.   You are teaching your children at an early age that if you don’t have cash to pay for something, charge it.   Adults today are in financial situations that have gotten way out of control because of the need to instant gratification.

Children learn so much from parents that affect them for a life time.  We pass on enough bad habits in our years of parenting without passing on the use of credit cards.  The best lesson we could teach our children is to learn to save for what they want.   Instant gratification is a problem with today’s youth that seem to want everything right now!  

The world is changing so fast but the basic principles of life should be retained in order to provide a safer and more secure future for the next generation.  What kind of lesson are you teaching when you hand them a credit card?   What happened to allowances, savings and working for extra funds?   When was the last time you had a teenager come by your house to ask if they could mow your yard or call to see if you needed them to baby-sit this weekend?   The generation of today is no longer doing the mundane things we did as kids to earn extra money but expecting it to be given to them and now we want to add to this problem by giving them credit cards; I don’t think so!

Credit cards are for emergency needs and what emergency does a kid have that would require the ownership of a credit card.   Parents in the household are providing them with food, shelter, clothing, school costs and health care leaving no need for credit card. 

Many parents today are being controlled by what I call “peer pressure”.   Little Joe’s parents gave him a credit card so they feel they must now give their child a credit card.  This type of parenting has got to stop.   We have seen how out of control the cell phones for kids have gotten; all kids now think it is their “right” to have a cell phone.  We won’t go there as that is another issue completely but it is an example of how things go out of control.

The best lesson you parents can teach your children is how to budget, save and control finances.  You may not be good at doing this but you can break that cycle by trying to teach your children to do better.  We as parents know better and may have gotten ourselves in so deep we’re having difficulty getting out but that doesn’t mean we don’t know better and can’t teach better.   Do what’s right and teach your child how not to make the mistakes of so many; teach them how to manage money. 

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