There is a major debt epidemic that is causing Americans to live in despair. And the creditors are now striking at the young people to get them used to running on the dreaded credit card treadmill at a tender young age. The large credit card companies post up regularly right outside of college campuses offering young unemployed students credit cards pre-approved with $5,000 lines of credit. All with the intent of getting students deep in debt so once they graduate they will be riddled with credit card debt for a very long time.
This causes many problems for students. One detrimental problem is that kids need to take time away from studying to work more hours to pay off completely avoidable credit card bills. Some instances force young people to drop out all together to get full time jobs to pay off their bills.
For anyone who has seen the very unnerving documentary ‘Maxed Out’ you can see first hand how bad a debt situation can affect students. There were two college students whose loving parents were interviewed, both of whom killed themselves over their enormous debts that they owed. The annoying phone calls from collections agencies didn’t at all help the situation. Plus many more kids fall into deep depression because of the stressful debt situation cornered into.
These credit card companies even go to the extent of employing other college students to solicit their credit cards within the dormitories. Some students will make up to $20 for every student who signs up to get a line of credit. And I am sure there are many more techniques they are using to sign up as many naive college students as they possibly can.
One way to counter this crisis would be to enlighten students in the 12th grade before going off to college about the associated risks that come with having lines of credit. There should be a core course adopted into the curriculum of high school seniors teaching them on what could happen if they misuse credit. The course should also teach kids how to correctly budget their money to avoid any unnecessary debt problems in college.
Debt settlement is a very attractive method of credit card debt reduction for the college students that have found themselves in a very bad debt situation that they can no longer manage to keep up payments on. It will help college students save a lot of money and become released from the horrors of debt within a few years, so when they get out of school they will not be stuck with a large debt amount over their heads
Steve Martin is a debt analyst and research assistant with the US Consumer Advocate, which primarily practices in credit card debt settlement.
- Steve Martin