The Main Targets Are College Students

The Main Targets Are College Students

Credit card companies on college campuses give out free trinkets—t-shirts with college

logo, stuffed animal school mascots, candy, pizza, frisbees, travel mugs—to get college

students to sign up for credit cards.

- Americans for Fairness in Lending

For many students coming to college for the fist time tend to come open to new experiences followed by many responsibilities. Many students can be easily bombarded with up to a dozen credit card offers when they first arrive on campus, and once they are approved, spending can be hard to stop. Credit Cards are always being advertise in our society within the media in many ways and are seen as the must have in order to be able to afford materialistic objects that one would want but could not afford on a daily basis.

Along with our degree comes an innumerable amount of pressure dealing with new things, making deadlines for classes, and how to best use the small amount of money that we students get from our part-time jobs. When dealing with money, college students want whatever item, trivial or not, they desire at the time they desire it. For example, if a student would want to go out and get a case of beer and take-out food for $25, and they only have $28 and need gas the next day; they will probably get the beer and food and walk the next day to school. This sort of attitude is very common and leads to having small amounts of money all the time, and credit card companies know this.

I believe the reason that college students fall for credit card programs of good and questionable intentions is the feeling of temporary invincibility. College students can go out and buy whatever they want and not pay for it until they have the money. The trap many credit card companies want students to fall into is not actually having that money later so interest payments pile up and instead students will be paying down outrageous bills for years. These large bills lead to the next problem college students get into with credit cards, getting another one to pay off the bills from the first one. This eventually leads to bad credit and large amounts of debt in the future even when students are out of college. College students spending habits are different from most other Americans because of our lifestyle, but we should still have the discipline to not pile up credit card debt just so we can be part of the crowd.

"Students are targeted by credit card companies because they are an easy target and not very educated when it comes to personal finance," said Fred Brock, assistant professor of journalism and author of "Live Well on Less Than You Think: The New York Times Guide to Achieving Your Financial Freedom." In the society we live in today, many people feel that it's hard to live without a credit card, and there are emergencies that occur when a card comes in handy, like buying airline tickets and buying things online for once personal pleasure. Some people can believe that credit cards can be a good starting point for many students to build up credit that they my need for the future. While others may disagree and say it’s leading to students being in debt for quite a long time. Many companies are especially eager to target freshly minted college students, who are naive in money matters and especially vulnerable to credit