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A compromise for giving your kids your credit card? I don't know why you'd ever even need to do that. Unless it's for an emergency or something, but even then thanks to technology you can probably pay for an emergency hotel room/plane ticket or car repair over the phone. I just can't see why they'd need your credit card. I can't ever remember once getting my parent's cards.

Why does the word 'yuppie' come to mind?

There are plenty of ways to create wishlists online. (Amazon comes to mind.) This just seems...wasteful. Besides, other than the super well off, who in the world just hands over a credit card for a child to purchase whatever they want??

Give your kids an allowance instead. It will teach them how to manage money, save up for things they want, and that when the money's gone it's gone. There are already too many people with insane amounts of consumer debt; this credit card approval thing just seems to me a good way to create more future bad spenders.

i hate the name. "bill my parents"? sounds so spoiled.

I first had a credit card when I was 18. Didn't use it for a few years. Then I did, and was quickly in debt. Took another year to get out. Lesson learned. But beyond giving a credit card to a child/student at a far-off university, who might actually have some emergency spending, it seems like a bad idea. Especially if text-message rates are any indication of what the parent is in for.

If they want something, they can do extra household chores and SAVE up with their allowance for wishlist items.

Not only did I sign up to do extra chores for quarters, I also babysit and did odd jobs to save up money.

Personally, I don't think this has to do with yuppies at all. A lot of people overspend on their kids regardless of class.

Great another way for parents to indulge and spoil their kids. Teens shouldn't have wish lists; they should have jobs.

As for emergencies, my parents gave my sister and I each a credit card billed to them when we started driving through college. There were rules as to when we were allowed to use it (approved car repairs, book yourself a flight home, go spend x on yourself for your birthday and emergencies), and neither of us ever broke them. It came in handy a couple of times, but this site doesn't even fulfill the emergency need. If you get stuck on the side of the road with no money, and no phone or can't reach your parents I'm not sure how a "wishlist" is going to help you.

I agree with sordspoint. We were taught the value of money. Also to have enough for what we needed once we got our own min wage job at 16.