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One thing I'd add is that past examples like good advice or straight up having the cash to assist with certain major purchases, parents can further advantage their kids. They add their underage children (or of age, but that's less relevant) as an authorized user to a specific credit card. Paid in full, on time, utilizing ~7-15% of limit, and increasing limit every 6 months-year... kid could reach adulthood with a perfect score and many years of reliable history.
This knowledge is becoming more common in various different populations- my upper middle class friends' parents who worked in accounting/finance did this for their kids about 20 years ago (mine did not), but I recently had an uber driver who had been doing this for his teenagers.
I expect as underage credit building becomes more common, young adult scores will become less indicative of ability to pay, though I imagine fuckups will ruin their own scores quickly enough for the system to correct things. I expect said fuckups will be a central example of how credit is a privilege based system, though it's more of a loophole exploit that didn't substantially exist for most of the system's history.
I had an AP civics teacher tell every kid in his classes this. Midway through college I had an massive credit score and the bureaus showed me having 30 years of history (?!?).
Gotta trust your kid enough not to be a dumbass though.
I hadn't even considered the possibility of yet-born kids being added for credit purposes (I have contemplated descendant trusts at length). Dunno about authorized users requiring SSN or not.
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This doesn't give you a perfect score as your history only has a single credit type, but it does give you a very good score.
However based on the very small sample of people whose detailed financial history I've seen the apple doesn't fall far from the tree regarding credit factors.
You don’t need a perfect score, you need above 680(or well into the 700’s if you want to get a better rate).
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You're absolutely correct that no credit mix = no 850, the actual perfect score.
But my understanding is that above 760 there aren't any better rates or other perks, it's just a nicer cushion.
Auto loan is certainly possible with parental cosigner.
Mortgage is kinda wacky but could be done with parental cosigner with the kid still living with parents but landlording to pay mortgage. Down payment on a house would certainly be worth more than covering tuition at most colleges/most subjects, even if housing is in a bit of a bubble and rates are ass.
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I taught a middle school personal finance class for a credit union a while back, and the advice was basically this, or to at least get a credit card at 18, even if you don't need it (especially when you don't need it!) use it a bit, and pay it off in full each month.
At the same time, the American finance system seems reasonably lenient on young people with steady jobs. I walked into a car dealership with no credit but an annual work contract, and walked out with a decent car. The interest rate wasn't great, but it was in an era of very low rates, so I didn't notice that much. This was financed through the (used) dealer, and it might be much harder for someone with no credit history to finance a car they found online. As it probably should be? Many people are unable to evaluate cars on their own, independently of general trustworthiness.
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