Avoid College Financing with Credit Cards
May 1, 2008
As a college student, you will find that many credit card companies are willing to give you pre-approved credit cards. In fact, some will give you credit cards with a large credit amount. Other cards will have you make no payments until after you graduate or complete your course work. Sounds tempting? There are some pitfalls that you should be aware of.
Charging books, clothing, occasional tanks of gas and so forth during college can be very tempting. But if you finance your college through credit cards, you are going to have some huge bills when you graduate. Worse yet; many are at extremely high interest rates.
Avoid college financing with credit cards and you will learn to budget. You will have significantly less credit debt when you graduate from college. Plan, optimize and think smart with your money while you are in college.
Be Aware of Pre-Approved Credit Cards
May 1, 2008
I cannot tell you how many pre-approved credit cards show up in my mailbox daily. They are simply amazing. It is a challenge to meet all my bills now. My credit isn’t even really that good. But, I still receive numerous monthly offers for pre-approved credit cards. Here are a few things that I have learned.
Most of the pre-approved credit cards are for a very low credit amount. This means that if I don’t have that type of cash on hand; I probably shouldn’t be using a credit card to pay for it anyway.
The majority of the pre-approved credit cards offers that I receive have horrible interest rates. You would be amazed at how high some of them are!
The membership fees for the pre-approved credit cards are out the roof. If they want to give me a credit card, why are they charging me membership fees? Obviously, they looked at my credit record; right?
Some of the pre-approved credit cards aren’t pre-approved at all. You have to deposit what you want your credit limit to be. If I had the money on hand, why would I need the card to begin with?
