Helping Students Get Affordable Credit Cards

If there was one group that credit companies like to target, it would definitely be students. There is a good reason for this — for the most part, students are generally supported still by their parents, giving them a stable source of income. In addition, students tend to shop more frequently than their adult peers, giving credit card companies the opportunity for a lot of sales volume. Because they’re just getting started in the world, students tend not to understand the “fine print” of owning a credit card the way other adults do. Does this mean that students can’t get affordable credit cards? Absolutely not — it just means that students have to get the best information possible in order to move forward.

For example,  if you have students in your home right now, you will need to sit down with them and really explain the ins and outs about credit cards. You will need to make sure that they get the best interest rate possible, even if it means giving up one of the benefits of credit cards like getting cash-back for purchases or rewards points for trips. Most students will not have the money to really take the number of trips necessary to benefit from these features, so there’s no point in getting a credit card that has these things.

You will also need to sit down with the students in your house and walk them through the process of applying for a credit card online. It may seem odd to actually sit down with them and apply online, but the reality is that they will naturally have questions as they go through the process, and it’s just easier to do this as a team than try to allow them to do everything on their own.

It’s important to also mention how to use credit cards as a financial tool — there is software that you can give the students in your family that will help track their spending with virtually no troubles at all.

Are credit cards bad for students? Definitely not — in fact, it can help them really bridge the gap between other sources of funding and the things that they need to accomplish. There’s no need to be afraid of credit cards, and if you set up the right foundation for your students from the beginning, there’s no limit to what they can do to build their credit history with credit cards!