I remember a day some years back, one of the first days of a new semester in college. People were tossing balls, passing out catalogs, and handing out free stuff. I was completely charmed by all the activity. After all, a major feature of college life in the U.S. is limited finances, so free stuff is like gold. As a college student, I felt entitled to my share!
I moved closer to scout out the situation. In my mind, I heard my mother issue her famous line: “There is no such thing as free stuff!”, as the student behind the table urged me to receive a brand-new dictionary. My mom’s voice was quickly filtered out as I reached out to claim my gift. I was handed a form instead. Once I completed the credit card application, I was told, I would receive a free dictionary. With the confidence that a probe of my finances would reveal the sheer weakness of my profile, I completed the form and submitted it.
To my sheer amazement, plastic freedom made its way into my mailbox a few weeks later. At first, I was shocked that these huge credit card corporations trusted me, a struggling student holding two minimum wage part-time jobs and paying monthly installments on a purchased computer. But the credit card company seemed to know more than I did, so I accepted the card and decided it was perfect to develop my own credit just as so many had done before me.
My first purchases were tame: a T-shirt, vitamins, or a CD, as if I hadn’t had the card. Soon, however, I began to buy things that I wanted. With my artificial sense of security, I bought a guitar, a fishing rod, long-stem roses for my girlfriend, a brand-new wardrobe, a sophisticated new calculator, and countless other trifles I felt I “absolutely needed”. I began to accumulate debt.
Things got worse when I lost one part-time job and with it my funds grew even smaller, like those now long-dead roses. I began taking cash advances just to eat. There was barely enough money from my paychecks to cover basic ongoing living expenses, and satisfying the minimum monthly payment on the card was impossible. Now, the principal balance doubled due to late payment penalties and other sanctions that the credit card issuer imposed in accordance with the contract.
Usually, I’m not a person who takes things too seriously. I always see the positive side of negative situations, but the gravity of my credit card debt crisis had left me in despair. My parents provided the tuition for school, so I believed it was my responsibility to take care of everything else in my life. I owed them more than I could possibly imagine, specifically their vision of a boy becoming a truly autonomous man. Now, I was letting them, and myself, down. Every time my mom called to chat, she always asked if I needed money. I knew her heart would break if I had said “Yes”, so I shrugged it off and hid everything from her.
I began to lose interest in many activities in which I’d become involved. Friends would call and invite me for dinner, but my finances would prohibit any expenses, so I’d decline every time. I would manufacture excuses for why I always said no to their offers. My dirty little secret began to tear at my emotional stability. Soon, calls from friends became more infrequent, meeting new people was out of the question, and my mom began exclaiming she didn’t know why she even bothered to call me. A simple matter of credit card debt caused me to drive everything I cared about from my life. I felt emotionally crippled and financially bankrupt!
After graduation, I finally explained my financial distress to my mother. It had been several years since my awful money issues began, so I believed the wound had been fairly well healed. However, the blend of disgust and embarrassment I felt when I explained my credit card debt was torture. I choked on every word, and I hesitated on the number. I felt physical pain when I looked her in the eye. There was nothing more terrifying to me than exemplifying a parent’s nightmare. The time had come to move toward a solution. At that moment, I felt the negativity I had brought into my life began to dissolve.
Recently I learned that I’m not an isolated case, not the only college student to suffer from credit card chaos. In a time of sky-high tuition costs, many students fall to the temptation of easily accessible credit cards. They are left with tremendous amounts of debt before their lives have even truly begun.
Credit card is not the criminal. However, there is a suspicion that credit card companies have provided students with access to debt because they allow young, ignorant consumers without sufficient funds to undertake financial responsibility. To remedy this situation, the screening procedures must become more severe, and college campuses should be free of credit card marketers. If this does not change, many students, like myself, will suffer the consequences of the illusion of a seemingly free but staggeringly expensive $3,000 dictionary.