Higher Ed Utah

Tom is a graduate student at a Midwestern university completing a major research and writing project on student credit card debt. When Tom was in college, he built up $15,000 of credit card debt because he never learned how to use credit cards responsibly.

In some ways, Tom was fortunate. He didn’t suffer many of the consequences of getting into that kind of debt in college, such as losing out on a job, apartment, car loan or graduate school admission, because his parents bailed him out of his debt. His experience was not the only thing that motivated him to want to educate and help other young people; Tom’s friend committed suicide because of credit card debt.

I know you don’t want your child to have to deal with the emotional, academic and social stress of crushing credit card debt. So unless you want to set up a “bail my kid out of credit card debt” fund, it’s time to sit down with your future college students and make sure they have all the financial information they need to get through college as debt-free as possible.

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