Cavalier credit card use leads students into debt

The longing is unbearable.

Before your eyes is the new EA Sports Madden NFL Xbox game. Your willpower is shot, and you grab it before the little kid down the aisle can get his chubby fingers on it.

But when you open your wallet, you remember it is empty - the entirety of last week's paycheck spent on groceries, rent and last night's adventures.

This definitely counts as an emergency, right? And before you know it, the DVD is wrapped and charged, and you are happily on your way - at least until the bill comes.

As financial pressures build for today's college students, credit cards have become an increasingly popular method of spending. For Chinese food, for bar tabs, for car payments, students are swiping their cards left and right.

The average undergraduate student owns three credit cards and has $2,748 in credit card debts, according to a study conducted in 2000 by Nellie Mae, a leading student loan company.

With interest rates as high as 23.9 percent, an unpaid debt can rise well beyond a manageable bill in a relatively short amount of time.

Tiffany Landon, junior theater major, said that she got her first card four years ago in case of an emergency. Before she knew it, she had six.

"If you're shopping, you just want to keep swiping your card," said Landon. "It's like it's fake money. It's not really mine."

Whitney Woznick, a junior marketing major, said she was also na??ve in her early consumer habits - she has accumulated so many cards she can't afford to pay more than the minimum amount on each card every month.

"It's addicting," she said. "I'm a shop-a-holic, and I never used cash to pay for anything. Then I started getting the bills."

Landon and Woznick both agreed students shouldn't keep more than one or two cards.

"It's easy to lose track of how much you're spending," said Aek Eisenhauer, a freshman chemical engineering major. "You kind of forget that it's debt there."

Eisenhauer, who has four cards, said that he is surprised with the credit policy of some companies. Before he was in debt, Eisenhauer said that he was often denied credit, yet after he had incurred a significant credit debt, companies became more lenient.

"As soon as you show them that you can go into debt with their money, they loan you more," said Eisenhauer.

Woznick said that as her debt accumulated, she began to receive an increasing amount of credit card solicitations in the mail.

"Every day now, I get a new credit card offer in the mail," she said. "I throw them right in the trash."

Cole Trahan, sophomore political science major, got his first credit card through a solicitor in the UB Commons, a decision he said he now regrets.

"One day I was broke and I wanted to buy some new stuff, so I used my card," said Trahan. "They were sending me statements in the mail that said how much I owed, and when it got beyond a certain amount, they just stopped sending me the statements. I have no idea how much I owe now," he said. "It just keeps getting worse."

Eisenhauer pays about $40 a month for his premiums, but with interest rates, he said this only adds up to a deduction of about 50 cents from his collective debt.

Although junior English major Nichole Burton doesn't own any credit cards, she said it is acceptable for students to have them as long as they are responsible.

"Students should always pay their full amount, not the minimum. That way they won't go into debt," she said.

Although Landon has incurred a significant debt, she said that credit cards aren't an all-around bad idea for students because they are helpful in emergencies and effective for building up credit history, if the bills are paid on time.

Randal Ehrenpreis, sophomore business major, is displeased with credit card solicitors on campus, and warns students to think twice before being duped into signing up for one.

"People should know enough to read everything before they sign it, especially when they ask for your Social Security number," he said. "If you don't pay it off, they can ruin things for you a long time down the road."