Secured Visa Cards
Financial Education is Priceless
You send your kid off to college, never realizing the financial dangers that lurk. Sure, you realize the costs of tuition, fees, books, room, board, beer and pizza, but you never think of your child applying for Visa cards! Kids this age apply for--and receive--credit cards all the time. Credit card companies are on campus giving away free t-shirts if they apply, and the next thing you know they have a credit card in their hot little hands with a $200 limit. Then they go buy stuff, and when they get the bill, they notice they only have to pay something like $10. What does that do? Encourage more spending!
Before your child heads off to college, sit them down and have a good stern talk with them about the evils of credit card debt. Then explain that you are giving them a secured Visa card. In case you're wondering, secured Visa cards are basically Visa cards that you buy. You fill out an application and send in a check for whatever you want the limit to be, plus the fee for setting it up. When you get the card, you can give it to your student, explaining that although it looks like a regular credit card, it has a $500 (or $200, or $1,000--whatever you can afford) limit that has to last all semester. And when the money is gone, the card will be declined (likely in front of all their friends at the pizza place). This will teach them to keep track of what they spend. It almost makes you wish secured Visa cards were around when you were in school, doesn't it? And while we're wishing, it would have been nice to have Visa gift cards back then too....oh well. You can't live in the past, so live in the present with secured Visa cards.
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