Unpaid credit hurts students and the U.S.

Watch out for credit card companies using predatory lending practices to lure young people into lifetimes of high interest payments.

Shiny envelopes touting promises of low interest rates pop up in my mailbox daily. If I just need a little cash right now, they say, they’ll help. I deserve so much, and, with a little extra cash, I can have everything I want.

Almost half of the students who drop out of school say financial pressures are to blame. Credit card debt is cited as a primary contributor to financial problems among the college demographic.

Credit card companies and banks show up at campus orientations and beckon from the University Center. They’re just waiting until one of us falls, weakened by that crazy urge to buy an Xbox or go out for that swanky night we kept telling ourselves wasn’t an option.

They especially like students, ripe and ready to be milked until we die by a 21-percent interest rate.

Sometimes, they’ll even let you customize a Van Gogh or your own picture on the card – what a sweet deal. Good luck digging out of that one.

Meanwhile, as we succumb to the Hello Kitty waffle maker on the way out of Wal-Mart, storage companies pop up across the West to pile up all the plastic crap that looked so cool just last month.

Today a credit card is necessary to rent a car, buy a plane ticket, or reserve a hotel room. With plastic, it’s all possible.

Our entire country is based on buying stuff we don’t need with money we don’t have; it’s the proliferation of plastic.

Credit cards can be useful, especially in a pinch. Using credit makes sense for large items, like a home or a car. But our obsession with acquiring more stuff makes the temptation too much. And marketing-savvy credit card companies prey on that, using sexy people in sleek commercials to sell their goods.

Students aren’t the only ones in trouble. The housing market is collapsing because of what many have called predatory lending practices by aggressive lenders.

And the American tendency to live beyond our income is sending the dollar’s value down daily. Our national debt is in the trillions, and the U.S. owes China hundreds of billions of dollars.

As this country borrows more money daily to fund wars and the dollar plummets, all of us are left working just to pay the interest payment. 

Better hope they don’t call in the chips. We’ll all be out of luck.