Credit Card Debt Management

When I read Zac Bissonnette’s latest post on BloggingStocks.com, taking Citibank to task for commissioning college students to prey on their peers — it brought back memories.

My own naive student credit card application experience – for which I got a university t-shirt and a record on my credit report but no actual credit card — was similar. He was the cool guy with the red afro. These forms must be legitimate if he was hawking them. He was, after all, the fearless leader of the student section at all the university basketball games. Seriously — that was my thought pattern.

In retrospect, I have to wonder how the outgoing redhead came to be involved with the student credit card business. Bissonnette’s post sheds light on the possibilities, with Citibank now paying college-aged headhunters between $5 and $10 per college student they can convince to complete a student credit card application. Fast, easy and tempting cash for a broke kid.

I, like the many students profiled in the Business Week articles to which Bissonnette’s post refers, had no clue about consumer credit! Not till several years later did I even give the student credit card account a second thought. Thankfully, it still had a zero balance and I closed it with ease.

Not every college student is so fortunate to escape relatively unscathed. Business Week even profiled a teen claiming to have dropped out of college his sophomore year to pay down his $3,000 student credit card bill, tired of living in fear of creditors’ calls. The article states that college student credit card use has skyrocketed over the course of one generation, and gone from 67% in 1998 to 75% presently.

Warn the kids, everyone! Education on such matters need to start in high school, long before these naive consumers hit their 18th birthday. Teach responsible money management habits and the ins and outs of credit cards sooner rather than later so they aren’t taking away loads of consumer debt along with their diploma.