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Should I open a credit card when I turn 18 just to start a credit score?
I want to recommend an exercise: Find all the people nearby who you can talk to in less than 24 hours about credit cards: Your family, whoever lives with you, and friends. Now, ask each of them "what's the worst situation you've gotten yourself into with a credit card?" Personally, the ratio of people who I asked who had credit cards to the ratio of people with horror stories about how credit cards screwed up their credit was nearly 1:1.  Pretty much, only one of them had managed to avoid the trap that credit cards created (that sole exception had worked for the government at a high paying job and was now retired with adult children and a lucrative pension).  Because it's trivially easy over-extend yourself, as a result of how credit cards work (if you had the cash at any second, you would have no need for the credit). But do your own straw poll, and then see what the experience of people around you has been.  And if there's a lot more bad than good out there, then ask yourself "am I somehow more fiscally responsible than all of these people?".