Assuming you would pay it in full every month, why not use a debit card? As far as protection, I have gotten calls whenever I made purchases in areas other than my home area and they said they would refund them if they weren’t legit.

People always told me I needed to get a credit card when I was in college so that when the time came to buy a home I would have enough credit history. This is a bunch of baloney. I an 27, I have never had a credit card of any kind, and I had no problem getting a lower than average mortgage rate because by credit score was OVER 800 despite I had no prior credit cards.

People say you can’t live life without credit, but that is just not true.

After making regular payments for a year on the gas cards, your score will increase significantly. Should also be fairly easy to get approved for a college student credit card (assuming you have no credit, and NOT bad credit).

He needs to get what he can get now, keep his balance paid off monthly, build the credit and THEN get the good cards. I think a paid-off credit card is a wiser way to build credit than loans just for the sake of credit; but that may just be my take.

He won’t have any problems getting a credit card when he goes to college. I had no credit and got a Citi card before classes started. It had an extremly high % but I made purchases, paid them off, they raised the line of credit from $500 to $1000 within months, then I got a sears card w/$1000 credit line, and so on. I fell into the use your cc’s to live trap when my class schedule made it impossible to find gainful employment and now I couldn’t get one if my life depended on it.

I would rather not have a card now, and I highly recomend going a different route for building up credit. It’s too much of a temptation no matter how much self control you have. I have lots, it was just too easy to whip out the plastic when I was starving. Taking out a student loan can help a great deal. The first round of loans I took out got paid off during a break I took from college. When I went to apply for something, the guy showed my the credit report and said that loan boosted my credit rating.

I would recomend going with a real financial institution though. At least check to make sure the emergency loan will actually be reported since it may be considered a ‘private’ loan. I’ve taken out the so-called emergency loans and it was basically a loan from the school until the funds from my loans came in. I bought a car once from a special credit dealer, and even though I had to give them my SSN they didn’t report anything to the credit bureau. It would have been nice if they did, I paid the car off very quick. My point is you need to be careful. If you qualify for subsidized loans, it can really work out in your favor, especially since the govt pays the interest while you are in school. No matter how long you are in school, as long as you take 6 hrs a semester, if you could save that money during that time, you could pay it way down and escape a good deal of interest. It all depends on how you look at it.

But just to build up credit? I swear, the world has gone crazy.

This way they don’t have to piggyback on anyone’s credit – no worries for anyone.

I’m a living example of the sucess of this. My dad’s had me on his credit cards since I was a baby, and now, as a 21 year old college student, I have 2 credit cards with a combined credit limit of $16,000! Both of those are my own personal cards. Don’t worry, I never use more than a $1000 of it, and rarely that much. :)

I was in this same situation when I was 18. I had a savings account since I was 12 and got rejected the first time I applied for a credit card (I’m sure for the same reason). A few days later I applied for a student credit card with another bank and got accepted. My credit limit was only $1,000 at first, but that was enough. It’s 8 years later and I still have that card. Anyways, there are my 2 cents.

My parents put me on of their cards, and it helped me build up credit well, and fast. I had around a 730 for a long time. Now that I have added some of own debt (housing, etc.) I got denied for a 1200 loan, and realized that on my credit report was my parent’s AmEx balance of 20K+!!!

If you use an authorized user to help out, make sure you get off of their account once you are settled. I was on that account for probably 6 years and until it got in the way of my debt to income ratio, I didn’t realize I was still on it!

i understand that he wants a citi card to take benefit of the promos, but he may be looking the wrong way. Since he is a student, citi does have cards they market for students. i echo !Wanda, in that once he’s on campus, he will get inundated with all the credit card applications that exists to man.

I had to have my father co-sign with me on a Credit Union one, and then later on I was able to get my own.