Discussion of students possessing credit cards
A recent questionnaire survey showed that about 60 percent of university students around the world hold some kind of credit card. And different people have different opinions about the phenomenon of university students holding the credit card. Some people think that university students like to possess a credit card. The card can make the university students think that they are independent from their parents, they needn’t demand everything from their families any more. Besides, owning and using a credit card can give students important early training in managing their financial affairs. For a example, the student who has learned to use a card in a responsible way at the age of eighteen or nineteen is less likely to get into serious debt problems later in life, when they will have other commitments to fund such as mortgage repayments. What’s more, an important and often overlooked factor is that a high proportion of students use the card intelligently and flexibly to take advantage of the best deals on offer, such as buying books and educational software to help parents to meet the high costs afforded to the students.
But every coin has two sides. Other people list some disadvantages of the credit card. Firstly, among the students who hold some kind of credit card, slightly less than 20 percent had a credit debt of US$5000 or more, but the average debt is a little more than US$1000. After administering the questionnaire, the experts held interviews with selected students and found that a common factor among all the interviewees was a high level of anxiety about paying off the loan. Some interviewees reported that they lost sleep over repayments and others admitted that they felt depressed about their debts. Another obvious problem caused by permitting students to hold credit card is that they get into debt and if their parents can’t help them to repay the debt, university students may be forced to take on part-time work. As a result, lots of time and energy that should have been going into studying will be wasted on other thing.
In my opinion, university students holding the credit card has both the advantages and disadvantages. So I think university students should use the credit card properly and intelligently. Credit card is convenient for the students to buy everything they like. But before they do this, they should think of that whether their credit card can afford the cost, or they might have a credit debt. If they can’t afford the cost, they’d better give up their decision to buy clothes, pop music or concert tickets. And if they want to buy something that they can’t afford now, they should learn to save money in advance.
Barker, S. (2002). The effects of part-time work on students study. Association for Student Welfare newsletter 20, 8-11.
Brown, A. N. (1999). Credit cards and students. Banking Monthly 18(4), 39-45. World Federation of Educational Retailers. (2004). Student spending patterns. Retrieved from World Wide Web October 12, 2005:http://www.wfer.org .uk World Federation of Students. (2002). A survey of indebtedness among university students. Retrieved from World Wide Web June 8, 2005. http://www.wfeds.org.hk
