A guide for parents
Freeze your child’s credit. It is free, and it takes three envelopes.
Your child almost certainly has no credit file — and that’s exactly the problem. A thief using a child’s Social Security number is borrowing a name with no history to catch them, and nobody notices until that child applies for a phone contract at eighteen. Freezing the file creates one and locks it in the same motion.
It costs nothing. Federal law requires all three bureaus to do it free for a child under sixteen at a parent’s request. If anybody asks you to pay for this, they are selling you something you can have for the price of a stamp.
Why it has to be by post
There is no online form for a minor. An adult can freeze their own credit in a browser in about two minutes; a child’s freeze needs documents proving the child exists and that you are their parent, so all three bureaus require it by mail. You have to write to each of them separately — a freeze at one does nothing at the other two.
This is the entire reason almost nobody does it. It is not hard, it is just three envelopes, and the cost of skipping it lands on somebody who cannot check.
What goes in each envelope
- A copy of your child’s birth certificate
- A copy of your child’s Social Security card
- A copy of your own government photo ID
- A copy of something showing your address — a utility bill or bank statement
- A short letter asking them to place a security freeze on your child’s file
Copies, never originals. Send the same set three times.
Where to send them
Addresses checked September 2026. Bureaus move these occasionally — the link under each one is theirs, and it wins over anything written here.
Then what
Each bureau writes back, usually within a few weeks, confirming the freeze and giving you a PIN. Keep those three letters somewhere you will find them in fifteen years — your child will need them to lift the freeze when they want their first card or car loan. A freeze stays until somebody deliberately lifts it.
The FTC’s own guidance covers the adult version of all this, and is the right place to check anything that looks out of date here.
Nobody pays us anything for this page
There is no product here and no referral. Every link goes to a credit bureau or to the FTC, because those are the only people who can actually do this and none of them pay for recommendations. Where GoodNest does earn from a link, it says so at the link — see what we are paid for.
While you are thinking about the long run
GoodNest is one link for a child, so family can add to the nest egg any time they think of them — and seal a letter, a voice note or a video to be opened when the child grows up. The link is meant to last until that letter opens. Gifts go straight to you by Zelle, Venmo or PayPal. We never hold, invest or choose.
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