Yes, it is actually possible for high school students to be permitted to get student credit cards of their own. For the high school student to be legally allowed to apply for a student credit card, the student has to be able to get a formal co-signer or guarantor to back him up when taking out an application form for a student credit card (because the high school student is usually a minor then.) Once the high school student reaches age 18, one has the legal authority to file a credit card application even in the absence of a co-signer or guarantor of the application.
There are two sides to this financial responsibility coin – on the one hand, it is true that the best way to learn to be accountable for your financial needs and actions is for you to be able to experience handling the funds yourself on a daily basis, even without adult supervision. Use of student credit cards is great for constructing a verifiable credit history from an early age. The other side though is that a teenager with a student credit card can be a danger to himself, to others, and to businesses everywhere, simply because student credit cards are so tempting to use regularly and with abandon. This may mean the student goes bankrupt even before he has a reliable source of income already. The best compromise to this is for the student to have a master list of his expenses while still being permitted to use any student credit cards under the guidance of capable adults. This allows the student to gain perspective as to how quickly or how slowly he tends to spend on what.
The best student credit card is one that can give the high school student the best deal possible for his borrowing needs. Oh yes, did you realize that? Student credit cards represent a loan or credit line issued to the student who owns the card. This means a high school student who opts for student credit cards is going to be getting into to debt. The student credit card lender might lend out at a minimal rate and even allow interest-free loans for a short period of time to sweeten the deal for the high school student. However, even the best student credit card represents a loan of some sort to the student, so it is important for the student to figure out who will be paying for his loan (or expenses.)
Usually, since the high school student is a minor who has zero to little money-earning capacity, the lender also has to ask whether the guardian co-signer has enough monthly income to tide over both student and co-signer in the event that the student runs up bills that are too high to be absorbed by his allowance. Much of the time, when high school students are too irresponsible to pay for what they charged, the lender may opt to go after the co-signor instead (who might be the parents of the teen) to retrieve what was spent by the student. This may prove awkward so the best advice to give high school students is: you charge it, you pay for it. This means putting a little fear in their hearts that they would have to absorb the cost themselves – it works wonders at preventing people from doing wrong things.
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