Being a college student can be interesting in that pretty much everyone is wanting to give you loans. I’ve always seen it as preying on the young and bright eyed.

Credit cards have been no different. I received two offers in the mail from the same company (I won’t say which), each offering a credit card specifically for students. I darn near took the first offer, but ultimately I put both forms through the paper shredder. Seriously, it’s way too easy to go into debt as a student.

At this time I don’t have a single credit card. I look at this as an accomplishment because it’s sooo easy to look at something and think, “I could pay that off in a month or two”. I know me, I would do that.

The best way that I’ve avoided this situation is to look at credit cards as individual loans. I ask myself, “Would I go to a bank and take out a loan to buy this item?” Typically the answer is no, and it really helps to put the situation into perspective.

Still, there are some good options out there. You can get 0% balance transfers on a lot of different cards, and many 0% credit cards help the transition by offering 0% interest for a certain amount of time after you receive the card.

With a bit of responsible spending it could be relatively painless on the wallet to own one. I don’t because there currently far more important things to spend that dough on. Come this Fall? That’ll probably be another story, financially and otherwise. So who knows?

~Steph

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