Suze, I want to teach my 16 year-old daughter to become financially responsible and to start building good credit. Is it normal to give my teenager a credit card?

Suze Orman: Is it normal to give a kid a credit card? Maybe yes, Maybe no. Here's the real question, is it wise? And I don't think it is especially if they're fifteen or sixteen years of age. I understand that you wanna build credit for your child, so here is the best way for you to do it. If you yourself, girlfriend, have good FICO scores, meaning you have FICO scores that are 720 or above, all you have to do is put your child's name on all of your credit cards as an authorized user. Don't tell them that you've done that. Don't let them have your credit cards. They never need to know, but then your FICO score or credit score becomes theirs.

Then what happens is when they go away to college, get them a debit card, hopefully one with very little fees so that you can monitor. They understand they have money in the bank. They can use it on a card. No money gets denied without hurting their FICO score, otherwise.