Student Credit Cards: Teaching Your Teen to Handle Them
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by: barrywaters
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Word Count: 530
Your teenager is about to leave for university, to learn, to grow... and to be rushed with offers for student credit cards. This is no minor nuisance. Credit card companies target college campuses, courting students with freebies and attractive promotional offers that might not be so attractive six months down the line. Companies are stunningly successful at getting students to accept cards and to use them: A study found that students left college in New York with an average of four credit cards and more than three thousand dollars of credit card debt. How can you keep the same trap from closing over the head of your own son or daughter?
* Teach them to be suspicious of any offer that flatters them. Student credit cards make students feel like theyre important by claiming that their offers are exclusive, for only the most select customers, or best of all, "a special offer just for you." The select customers consist of 19,000 of the 20,000 students on campus (and the credit card company would have sent offers to the other thousand if it just had their addresses), but most new customers wouldnt realize that without being told. Nor do the "special" offers offer anything very special. Learning to immediately discount any appeal that flatters their ego is essential to dodging bad student credit card offers.
* Teach them how to read the fine print. Credit card issuers hide the details of student credit cards terms in blocks of minute print or in long, bewildering tables, couched in jargon as dry and obscure as possible. Knowing what the jargon in credit card offers means and how to find the important information in a welter of irrelevant details is a skill your daughter or son will need to choose a credit card wisely.
* Teach them how to analyze special offers. Sparkly new 0% interest rates vanish after six months, but unless you know to read carefully, you might think you were set for free credit for life. Teach your teen to question offers that seem too good to be true and show them the places credit card companies hide disclaimers and details.
* Show them that if they dont need something, its not a bargain at any price. Its natural to be tempted by sales. But its not good for your wallet. Show your teen through your own shopping habits that buying only what you need now, not what you might need at some unforeseeable point in the future, is the way to handle money. This will not only help them to avoid bad student credit cards offers, it will dramatically reduce the amount of debt they accumulate in college.
Consider helping your teen go through offers for student credit cards and pick out their first credit card. Theyre guaranteed to insinuate that youre babying them and losing cool points by the minute, but they will never forget financial lessons you teach them. And when they graduate with a strong credit rating and no credit card debt, ready to take on the world, theyll thank you.
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