College Students Beware of Credit Cards

I keep reading about how credit card companies use sneaky and underhanded tactics to lure customers and then squeeze as much money as they can out of them. Double billing, high interest rates, annual fees, late fees and penalties, using your credit history against you, etc. are some of the many ways credit card companies get you.

Especially vulnerable are college students. They walk on to campus and are almost immediately bombarded with credit card offers. I know that I was accosted in the bookstore while I was buying my books. By the end of my sophomore year, I had four credit cards. I ended up $10,000 in the hole by the time I graduated. I was $13,000 in the hole one year after graduation. I ended up getting help from a Consumer Credit Counseling service to lower my interest rates and consolidate my cards into one monthly payment.

I have now been debt free for a few years now, but I wonder how many people out there wish that their respective schools would have kept a reign on the credit card companies and even offered some kind of financial management class. If you want to read more, check out this article in Business Week.