Part of your responsibility as a parent is to teach your child to be responsible with their money. If you don't, you will raise a young adult that has no skills for saving or spending wisely. And that's where a teen credit card can come in handy.

An easy way to teach your child to use money and the power of credit wisely is to give them their own teen credit card. There is no credit limit and the spending amount on the teen credit card is only the amount that is loaded on to the card. It can be as little as $1 if you choose.

Your teen can learn to spend their money in the smartest way possible by using a teen credit card. If your teen has a cell phone, you might make them responsible for paying their own bills. If your teen has a part time job or earns money doing chores around the house - instead of giving your teen cash and also footing the bill for their cell phone use, start transferring the money into their teen credit card account and your teen will quickly learn to monitor their text messenging use and air time on their cell phone when they are paying for their own cell phone use.

Your teen can also learn the valuable lesson of not spending all their money at once. With a prepaid teen debit card, your child won't have cash burning a hole in their pocket and they aren't as likely to make frivolous or spur of the moment purchases.

As your teen's credit card can also be used to online purchases, talk to your child about making sure to only use their credit card on reputable websites and unless the webpage they are on begins with "https" - it's not a secure page and no financial or personal info should be entered.

Also, discuss thinking ahead and looking at the bigger picture and not making spur of the moment decisions with money - in doing so you'll be laying the groundwork for your teen to grow into a young adult with a firm grasp on handling their finances - and it all started with a teen credit card.

Labels: teen credit cards