Which is the scariest? (click to enlarge)If you ask me, the answer is:
a little from column A
a little from column B
and a little more from couumn C.
I realize that a credit card in the hands of a teenager isn't really a weapon of mass destruction, but it's pretty darn close. I was in college when I got my first credit card. I was studying in Boston and went straight to Manhattan and maxed out the card buying shoes, clothes, booze. When the dinner bill would come I'd cover the whole check then have the others pay me back. Then I promptly took the cash to buy those pesky non-chargeables. Like drugs and god knows what else. And to think I thought I was being clever. OY!!!
I not exactly pround of it. But I worked really hard to mess up my credit and it pretty much started in college. It's a cautionary tale. If I had a kid going off to college, I'd put the 'credit card talk' right up there with the "drug talk" and the "HIV talk."
Image courtesy Cal Grondahl.
3 comments:
And it seems to be something that changed fairly quickly. I was in college from 82 through 86, and my parents refused to co-sign a credit-card for me until I was in my junior year, and even when they did, I was never tempted to go overboard with it. Hardly used it at all.
I don't say to show that I was a better person, or anything. More to illustrate how the marketing changed in a fairly short span of, I'd say, ten years--maybe less. Most of my colleagues (slightly younger, mostly with degrees that they got in the 90s) tell the type of story you tell.
Scary.
Kvatch, you're damn lucky. and damn smart too.
i was definitely a product of agressive on-campus marketing of credit.
OY!!!
Did you have any clue that "Column B" would be such more of a reality today relative to when you posted this?
By the way - that picture of you and your nephew is damn cute.
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