College Student Misuing Credit Cards
by: Tom Tessin

I’m sure that you’ve heard horror stories by now on how students abuse and misuse credit cards, making it look bad for the credit card industry.  How do they screw up so bad to give the industry a bad name?  Well, there are a few ways that a college student can abuse a credit card and the focus of this article is to show you exactly how a college student can misuse a credit card.

Splurging on purchases

When a college student carries a credit card, they essentially are carrying “credit”.  What does this mean?  Sometimes you’re carrying a card with a limit that’s above your head.  The number one reason students misuse credit cards are from spending too much money on things they can’t afford.  What students will find is that they will receive a credit card that has a high limit.  This limit is usually higher than the amount of cash they have on hand.  This leads to a person spending more money than they have leading them to that debt path.

Missing the payments

When you have a credit card, you have to pay the credit card company back on time.  This means that at the end of every month, you’re going to have to pay the company at least a minimum amount.  The minimum amount is usually a small number and you’ll want to pay this amount regardless.  Another way credit cards are misused are from students not paying their credit cards off in time. They will start to miss payments causing their credit scores to drop.  This is the last thing you’ll want to do when using a credit card.

Putting too much on the card

This statement kind of goes along with the first response as mentioned above.   We all know that life is filled with surprises and the last surprise you want is a medical bill or any type of other bill that says you have to pay a big amount of cash.  A lot of people find that they don’t have this cash and just end up throwing it on their credit card.  They then find out that when the bill arrives, they don’t have the money to pay off their bill.  The main point of this is to make sure that you have enough emergency money save up to avoid this problem.  The general rule is that you should generally save about 6 months of expenses just to be safe.

Misusing credit cards is a common theme not only among college students but among common consumers as well.  Misusing credit cards cause people to go into deep debt, have stress within the family causing problems, and having a lower credit score.  These aren’t good things and the only way you can prevent abuse among a credit card is to use it properly and spend only what you can afford.  If you don’t think you can use a credit card properly, simply shred it and use a debit card only.