Beware college students and beyond: Credit card providers are not your friends

Apromise is a promise. Today's topic: recognition cards.

First things first — one must recognize that recognition card game are debt, not cash.

While some of my beloved readers no uncertainty will revolve their eyes at that sentence, it is very important.

You see, some people look at recognition card game as a "status thing." This especially was large during the 1980s and 1990s, when whether you had a gold card, Pt card or the ultimate American Express achromatic card, made the difference on whether you were successful in the eyes of the world. This is similar to the position of having a Melvin Calvin Felix Klein T-shirt arsenic opposing to a plain-old Hanes or Fruit of the Loom T-shirt. If you had a Melvin Calvin Felix Klein T-shirt, which be five modern times as much as those plain-old T-shirts, you were just apparent cooler.

Ah, yeah.

Naturally, if you had a plain-old, run-of-the-mill credit card, you just weren't fashionable adequate — people often sneered at you in the check-out procedure lines at stores. And, of course, eating house waiters knew their tip would be paltry, because you didn't have got got adequate money to have a recognition card with a nice bounds or an enviable color.

So it got to the point where gold and Pt card game could be obtained by just about anybody — not just people who had a leading recognition history.

To be sure, by the late 1980s, you couldn't throw an anvil without hitting a college sophomore with a Pt card.

In fact, that's how so many immature people got into debt. Every college campus had credit-card shills on campus offering a card with your university's logotype on it — and, oh rapture, they would give you a free 2-liter bottle of Coca-Cola just for applying. (This Iodine experienced personally).

I have got a godsister who, according to the Old Man (my father, for new readers to this column), ran up more than than $20,000 before she graduated from college. Yikes.

Now what make you say the 20-grand went to? Hmmmm, allow me think . . . clothes, food, jewelry, concert tickets, athletics equipment and spring-break trips. You know, the really of import stuff.

Credit-card suppliers are not your friends. They are in business. In fact, credit-card abuse have given birth to respective businesses, including concerns that volition sell you identity-theft protection packages, concerns that volition negociate to take down your debt (many of them are fraudulent), concerns that volition be happy to give you another mortgage on your house, condominium or co-op to assist you pull off your debt.

Here are a couple of things that happened to me.

1. An employee at a clothes shop who was dating an employee at a sporting commodity shop that were adjacent to one another in a promenade victimized me by using my credit-card information to steal clothes after I bought a brace of sneakers. I got them and their directors fired after I blew the whistle to the police force and threatened to litigate both stores.

2. A depository financial institution that I never have got done concern with sent me a preapproved recognition card to my PARENTS' computer address (I had moved out of their house nearly 18 old age earlier!). All ANYONE had to make was unfastened the envelope, phone call the listed figure to trip the card, and start charging. It didn't substance that they sent the card to an old address. Thankfully,, my parents are not thieves. My experience with this depository financial institution should be especially unreassuring to people who dwell in flat composites and/or move frequently.

Next hebdomad I will stop my debt harangue with how I cover with recognition cards, credit-card suppliers and credit-card offers.

Thanks for reading. To my beloved anonymous caller: I am 44 old age old, and the 1 thing I DON'T necessitate to larn is the difference between a need and a WANT.

Jay Thomas Jefferson Alistair Cooke can be reached astatine (908) 707-3165 or by e-mail at .