All About Credit Cards

Students: worried about getting in over your head with credit card debt?
Parents: worried your kids might be getting in over their head with credit card debt?

Well, back in August, Senator Herb Kohl of Wisconsin was also not thrilled with the high balances that undergraduates (and even more for graduate) students are burdened with. Student loan debt is enough to worry about - more than that is quite unnecessary!

Therefore, he decided to introduce the “Student Credit Card Protection Act”. This legislation seeks to make it more difficult for students to acquire more credit than they should be able to afford. Specifically, the rules include the following:

* Require credit card companies to verify a student’s annual income if he/she is under 21.
* Require a parent, legal guardian or spouse to co-sign if the student has no verifiable income. Also, requires approval by the co-signer for increases in credit.
* Limit the amount of student’s credit based on their annual income.
* Prohibit the credit card company from issuing multiple cards to students.

Most of these seem like fairly obvious restrictions and it’s quite surprising that Congress has to get involved to make these stipulations into law. It’s still at the initial stages, so hopefully, it’ll progress further down the path and meet with universal approval. Even better would be if some of these legalities were in place for all consumers, and not just for students!