We haven’t added S18 to our credit card account. He uses his debit card for almost all his purchases. If he buys something on our behalf I just transfer money into his account. I also thought he couldn’t be an authorized user on the credit card account until age 18 so I never even thought to ask the card company. I might look into it now though…I’d prefer him to use a credit card if possible.
My D was already 18 when I added her, so not sure about this. She is on my Old Navy Visa.
D18 is not on our any of our CC yet but she’s also only just learning to drive now, we’ll add her as a user when she gets her license for all the reasons already mentioned.
She does have her own “teen” checking account and a debit/Visa card to go with it. We set that up when she was 13 and I transfer a nominal amount quarterly and she is responsible for all of her clothing purchases. It’s been a good experience for her. She made the mistake of tying the card to her Amazon account one summer, burned through all her money in about 2 months without realizing it until her card was being declined. Fortunately, she had a separate savings account not tied to the checking so she was able to pay herself back but she did pretty much have to drain that too. Big lesson. Lots of discussion about monitoring your account and what the money is supposed to be for (clothes). She pays a LOT more attention to her money now. 
My daughter was also put on our Citibank card when she was 16. She is an authorized user of our account with her name printed on her card. This was only a problem when she left her wallet at an away volleyball game and because all 3 of our cards were on the same account (mine, husband and daughter), we all 3 had to cancel our cards. Of course, a nice student ended up turning in her wallet but we had already cancelled and reordered cards.
I have really liked her having a debit card. We have full access to her account but she has no access to ours. I can see where and when she has purchased things and add or transfer money thru the ATM or computer and the funds are available to her immediately. This has been great for gas, grocery shopping and last minute, ‘I need this specific belt for sorority’ emergencies.
As an added benefit, she has needed to learn how to budget her money as we deposit money into her account on the 1st and 15th. We originally were making a larger deposit on the 1st and figured out fairly quickly that 2 week budgeting was much better for her (and us) than once a month budgeting.
Interesting to consider re: building credit if the cc companies do report authorized users. I’m going to call Citibank again tomorrow and if I get another uncooperative rep, I’ll add D18 to a different card. Thanks for the input, everyone.
https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/credit-cards/credit-card-authorized-users-build-credit/
@Kayak3, Citicard does report authorized users, so my kid will get it on her credit report, but she will still need more for a good FICO score. I think I will buy her a car (and pay most of it with cash) but do a car loan in her name and I will co-sign to help build her credit when the time comes.
I like co-signing the car loan opposed to co-signing a credit card better.
@kayak3 – D18 got a 1370 on her 10th grade PSAT and had a ton of email and physical mail afterwards. The first two were UChicago and Northwestern. I’d obviously heard of Northwestern because of their football team but didn’t know anything about UChicago. I did some searching on UChicago and realized that their contact was rejection-bait given D18’s score. Of course, D18 was taken by this advertising and went to one of those elite college tours in town (Brown, UChicago, Rice, Dartmouth, etc.). UChicago even sent a T-shirt and MIT sent email and a nice brochure. My guess is that they were targeting sophomores our zip code and/or school district, not individuals.
Anyway, you know what’s funny? After D18 did well on her 11th grade PSAT and ACT/SAT, she hasn’t heard from many colleges! I think she finally realized the game that was being played and UChicago has basically dropped off her list of schools to apply to next year.
BTW, we were in Houston for Christmas with the in-laws and toured Rice. It’s a really nice school and their presenters were of UChicago’s caliber. One interesting thing was during the presentation we learned that Rice’s incoming class had an ACT mid-50 range of 33-35. Wow! D18 has fallen to the 25th percentile for them. The scores keep going up and up … and now I’m a bit concerned about her getting into her current favorite: USC. They give a 50% cut on tuition for NMSF and seems like a good fit for her.
“My guess is that they were targeting sophomores our zip code and/or school district, not individuals.”
There has to be something to that. My D and her good friend here in town have almost identical academic profiles and ECs, yet attend different high schools and live in different districts. They get mail from vastly different colleges.
We haven’t gotten much mail since the PSAT either. Maybe the onslaught will come after the holiday break.
That’s what I find interesting…the lack of rhyme or reason to which students receive mail. Like I said, I had assumed all kids of a similar academic profile from my daughter’s (private) school received the same mail but somehow D18 got on target lists from schools that sent nothing to her teammate (like you mention @ShrimpBurrito).
Maybe the colleges buy lists. For ND to have begun sending fancy literature freshman year every few weeks (D18 did not take PSAT until sophomore year), they had to have gotten a name/address somewhere. Could it be HSPT performance? Terra Nova? State assessments? Maybe state GIEP info? I guess we may never know. 
What we DO know is not to read into any solicitation.
@droppedit , a 1370 sophomore year can definitely be in range for a solid jump junior year. I can see how the colleges would keep 1370 soph score from your D18 in their target audience range.
My daughter started getting a lot of mail after she took the PSAT after a sophomore - one was from Notre Dame which, frankly, I don’t think she has the stats for. “Rejection bait” is a good term for it. She has gotten mail from other schools more in her wheelhouse that we’ve looked at carefully and continue to consider.
I guess anybody can buy a mailing list these days …
@droppedit , sometimes it seems like the goals keep getting pushed further back, don’t they? My D15 is at USC and was NMF. Nonetheless, she was not assured of admission either. What helped quite a bit I think in her admission with scholarship was one night she received a call from a member of the school at USC to which she had applied, to gauge her interest in that major. That call went well, as my D was really interested in both USC and that department, and her enthusiasm was evident.
Our first two kids scored NMSF range and they got a lot of mail from competitive schools. Our DD’18 has done pretty well, but not in the NMSF range - very different schools are filling our mailbox.
Interestingly, our son’s PSAT score last year wasn’t in the commended range and he was inundated with mail. This year his Index was a 223 and he hasn’t gotten a single thing.
We can’t figure it out either.
^I figured schools don’t mail much in December and that the floodgates will probably open in January. S also has received almost nothing from colleges in December. He took his first SAT and ACT this month; I’m interested to see if those results have an impact on the college contact. No scores back on the ACT yet, but he did really well on the SAT so I wonder if he might see an uptick in interest from colleges or if it will be similar to last year.
So you guys think colleges can see a student’s ACT or SAT score? Or they pay for a list of names that score above a given threshold but they don’t see the name with the score. (?)
D18 did well on PSAT but I can’t say our mail is different than prior to the PSAT (though we continue to receive a lot of mail from a wide range of colleges, some selective but mainly not selective).
One competitive school did send an email today with a reference to their Engineering program and I don’t remember hearing from them before.
@Kayak3 I think colleges buy lists in targeted score bands but they can’t see an individual student’s score. Seems as if I read that on either the ACT or College Board website but could be wrong about the source and am too lazy to look it up at the moment. As far as I know the actual scores are only sent to the student, the high school and whichever entities the student has designated from his/her account.
Yes. It is my understanding that schools can get mailing lists with info on kids in target ranges and with certain characteristics. So a school could ask for contact info of any kid scoring in a certain range on the PSAT or could ask for a list of kids identifying as a certain race and with a particular score range or students from a certain geographic region within a range of scores.
Happy New Year! By the end of 2017, some of us will know where our kids will be going to college! 
And at this time next year some kids will be hurrying trying to finish applications due on 1/1. I’m really hoping DD18 is not one of them. DS15 was!
D18 isn’t doing ED anywhere so the drama for us will continue until, what is it, May 1st?
On a humorous note, between the time of my last post above and now, the following has happened. I caught a nasty bug and spent 36 hours in bed on Tue-Wed. My wife’s new car, which we bought for Christmas before leaving for Houston, was rear-ended on Thursday causing a total of $12K in damage. And to top it off, my wife starting having serious neck/shoulder pain Fri afternoon and we ended up in the ER early Sat morning. Why was that the topper? Because on Sat morning we were supposed to be flying out to Steamboat for a 30th anniversary celebration on the slopes (where we went for our honeymoon in 1987). Instead, we’re in the cold rain in Atlanta and she’s popping a cocktail of muscle relaxers, pain pills, and steroids. D18 has proclaimed this the “worst Christmas EVER”.