Dr. Wizard
Some things in life just cannot be explained. Like Stonehenge. Or the Jonas Brothers. Or this picture. The more I look at it, the weirder it gets. The UPS truck? The sewing machine? How do they fit together? I have no idea. Yet as baffling as I find these three enigmas, they are still more explainable than what I take to be the craziest swindle of the last twenty years: the great collegiate credit card explosion.
Here’s how it works: at various campus locales on random Fridays in November (when student checking accounts are running low) and at various Spring Break locations in the first three weeks of March (when student judgment is running low), a wily trickster somehow convinces thousands of unsuspecting college students to sign up for a First State Bank of Wichita Collegiate Credit Card. To entice participation in his swindle, this charlatan offers easy access to 500 magic dollars and a crappy white t-shirt with a hideous logo. In exchange, he extracts a usurious 29.99% interest rate, 30 dollars in annual fees, and 50 points from his victim’s credit score.
Now, let’s take a look at the long-term implications of these transactions. Meet Rick, a typical undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. Rick’s a normal guy – he drives a Teal 1980s Cavalier, enjoys Creed (but feels Scott Stapp’s solo career was hampered by rock journalism’s jealousy), and likes to spin Marky Mark records on the weekend as an amateur DJ. Like I said – just a normal guy on the fast track to a solid career selling crop-insurance for Country Companies. But Rick, upon reaching adulthood, is about to find out that some of the choices he made regarding easy credit in his time at UWO carry with them long term implications. You see, by the time Rick’s college experience ends, he will have fallen victim to the great credit card scam five times. And while he enjoyed his fair share of Milwaukee’s Best with that money (and put an awesome system in the trunk of his Cavalier), Rick’s going to graduate from college with five crappy t-shirts that he’ll only wear to mow the lawn, and having paid 7700 dollars in finance charges while making the minimum payment each month on his credit cards with his earnings from his job at Blockbuster.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is not smart – but it’s also not the worst of it. With his five open, but maxed-out lines of credit, Rick will find himself unable to trade in his Cavalier for a new Mustang – because, with a credit score of 379, his monthly car payment would be $942.11.
So, the moral of the story is…don’t let this happen to you. Look, it’s not a completely horrible idea for you to have a credit card in case of emergencies, but you should acquire this card by going to a real bank (like Chase or Bank of America) and having your parents co-sign the agreement. That way, you should be able to slowly build your credit history at a reasonable rate (somewhere in the neighborhood of 14.99% is reasonable for a first card) as you work your way through college and into adulthood. Whatever you do, don’t sign up for one of those shitty cards where all you are getting is a horrible t-shirt (or some other equally useless trinket) and a future credit score nightmare. Ask yourself this about the t-shirt: would you even buy that thing if you were sober? I know where most of you shop for t-shirts, and trust me, the Wichita trickster isn’t giving out clothing from the Salvation Army, threadless.com, Urban Outfitters, or American Apparel. That sucker is from a Malaysian knock-off of Fruit of the Loom. You still want it? Then sign up for the card using a fake name and a fake social security number – that was one of the best pieces of advice I got on my first Spring Break trip to South Padre Island ten years ago. Because of that little tidbit of wisdom, Dr. Wizard’s credit history is clean – and “Stuart Conrad’s” is FUBAR.
Joe Webb teaches American literature at Saint Louis University. For more of his advice, check out http://dr-wizard.com.
image source courtesy of: http://i118.photobucket.com/albums/o115/Pyrothon/unexplainable.jpg