By Sabrina Karl

Anyone paying attention to personal finance advice knows that credit card debt is to be strongly avoided. Still, there are good reasons to help your teen get their first credit card.

In particular, it’s helpful for starting their credit score off on a strong foot, while also letting you help them learn responsible card habits before making credit mistakes.

By law, you must be 18 or older to open a credit card on your own. But it’s smart to help your teen start sooner than that, by adding them as an authorized user on one of your cards that has a long on-time payment history.

Being an authorized user entitles them to receive a card in their name and use it just like you would, with their purchases being added to your account. You will still be the one responsible for payments.

Ideally, you would teach them how to review this account online and how you make payments, so they’ll know how to do this themselves one day. And if you’re holding them responsible for their own purchases, you can require they pay you their share by a due date each month, to instill the habit of paying every month, on time, and in full.

Besides helping them learn smart card habits while you can still supervise, making a teen an authorized user also starts their credit history early. This is useful because one of the major components of a credit score is length of credit history—longer histories lead to better scores. Someone with a record beginning at 15 has a score advantage over someone whose credit history doesn’t begin for another three years.

Again, however, it’s critical that the credit history they’re building is positive, so always keep the account on which they are authorized current with on-time payments.