18 year old son wants to start building credit. Recommendations?

open a bank account and a credit card.

Co-sign with him

he sounds smart, tell him to worry more about doing good in college. Live poor for the next 5-10 years, save money in a retirement account, marry the right person, get a good job. credit score will adjust itself accordingly and is much less important than the above.

Get him to apply for the Discover cash rewards card, it's their basic free card and it was my first card a few years back. No complaints and it actually has decent cash back if you catch gas or groceries on the rotating 5%

Add him as an authorized user on your cards and don't actually give him the card.

That is unless ur a broke dick

This is how we did it.

We let our daughter take out a small loan using our savings account as collateral. We made her take the loan money and stick it in her savings account and each month for 6 months made her transfer the payment out of her savings account to make the payment. We did this twice and the second time we increased the loan and repeated the process.

Also we bought her a new car at 18 and put her on as a cosigner and got her 2 credit cards (Capital one and Discover with a 500 limit). Since she only used them for gas and a few other small items, she paid them in full every paycheck (usually the balance was only 50+ dollars so it was easy for her to do. She would prefer to pay with cash but understands the importance of being able to be responsible with credit.

After a year she decided to trade her car in and get a new one. She was able to get it in her own name because she had established credit and a credit score over 700.

BTW she is only 20 and will gradute college next year. All of this has paid off for her and it showed her how to be responsible. She is getting married at the end of the year and she and her finance just got approved to start building their first home.

Agree with the posters who recommend a bank account and a credit card, keep it low limit, like $500 and have him put particular charges on it, say only gas paying it off each month. The fact that he wants to build credit is a great sign, encourage him to be as involved in his finances as possible, just keep an eye on him in case he does something rash... not unheard of for an 18 year old.

As it looks like others have said, Capital One has a great credit card aimed at people with no credit. Just get him started on that making small purchases and make sure he pays it off every month.