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There are teen agers who, as a legal expedience, are emancipated, and therefore are responsible only to themselves for their actions. The question posed here is should all teens have credit cards. My answer to this is no. Not only for teens, but for anyone. With credit cards, we are asking for something we haven't earned, and making a contract with a provider that insures we will be responsible for our debt. Living beyond our means is a bad way of life that often ends tragically with attorneys, courts, or in some instances in an emergency room. To start a young person down that road is simply enabling negative behavior.

Credit is a contract based on a promise to pay in the future for goods and services received today. The advantages of credit cards are significant, and most working adults have at least one. I don't. I have a debit card. This means I don't have to carry cash, and i don't travel financially further down the road than I am actually capable of paying the toll for. This is a simple convenience.

There are major disadvantages and dangers, however, to using a credit card as opposed to a debit card. When you carry a credit card, it is easy to buy beyond your means, to spend so much that you cannot meet the bill when it is due. When you carry a credit card, it is very easy to buy on impulse and forget you are spending future income, money that you do not yet have , or possibly cannot get or earn. Moreover, if you only pay the minimum balance each month, you may be surprised to find out how many years it will take to take to pay off the balance. Interest charges really add up to increase significantly the "bottom line" of the total of what you must pay. Also, it is rarely wise to buy something that will wear out before you finish paying for it.

People with significant incomes usually satisfy the basic economic equation, which is Assets minus liabilities equals net worth. The Average American lives in a fog of credit debt. Consider two cases of people I actually work with. One is a twenty something, two children,average income for an office worker, yet she has " special ring-tones" for bill collectors. She is always being chased for payments. She has several credit cards, and always jokes that she can make the minimum payment until she gets a raise. The second person is middle aged, maxed out cards, lives week to week on her paycheck, and just down sized from a sigle home to a condo, taking all her equity to pay off bills. This is no way to live. In these cases, as in the cases of many credit card holders, the equation is always unbalanced on the liability side.

Teaching teens how to join in on this dog chasing it's tail game is cruel and unusual punishment for their young lives.Recruiting teens into the debt corps is big business. Those of us with tens are familiar with the dozens of envelopes from credit card companies that arrive weekly with "special introductory rates" I prefer the pay as you go plan. Both my wife and I worked our way through college, we own our home and cars. The drawback to our approach is it all took time. The big plus is that we have assets, very few liabilities, and that brings a feeling of well being and a sense of a job well done. This is the lesson our kids need to learn. Do the work. Our children have always groaned at our philosophy, but here it is: Do the hardest stuff first, then, in the long run when you start getting tired, all that's left is the easy stuff. Dethat finitely not a paradigm of the classic Greek thinkers, but it is an approach to finances, and life in general, that works well.

Learn more about this author, Roderick Loiselle.
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