Story Detail
It is a Credit Jungle Out There
As a youth advocate and educator in financial literacy, I often talk to young people ages 18 and over that are already struggling with credit cards and collection agencies. As I teach workshops on bankruptcy, it breaks my heart to realize that statistics do not lie: almost 20% of all the bankruptcies filed in the US belong to people under the age of 25.
Why is this happening? When did credit card companies lose their common sense? When did they decide to fade the line between a mature potential client with a job and a broke young person with a student loan and no idea of what having a credit card involves? This phenomenon is reaching alarming consequences: Too many students are dropping college and working to pay for debts, or filing for bankruptcy when they should be enjoying their brand new financial lives.
I would like to think that parents are aware of this, but I see credit counselors helping parents understand basic financial concepts. Nobody taught them how to manage their money. How could they teach their own children? Could it be that talking about money is also taboo these days? Are parents unable to talk to their kids about credit and investing just the same way they are unable to talk about sex or drugs?
This is not only sad. It is tragic, because this same phenomenon is spawning a new race of predators roaming our country, preying on young students, unaware families and desperate debtors: real estate lenders cutting rotten deals that will end up in foreclosure, credit companies turining 0% APR offers into spiral debts that will end with a collection agency, crooked "credit doctors" charging $1,500 to "clean" negative credit information from the credit report of naive clients... It is a jungle out there.
Fortunately, we have the good guys: We have Mr. John H. Bryant and his Operation Hope, we have good counselors at Consumer Credit Counseling Services (CCCS) that help without charging an arm and a leg. We have educators showing people how to deal with creditors, collection agencies, debt, investing...
But why aren't those nice people in the fancy commercials at peak TV times? Why aren't they displaying signs on buses and spectacular signs on main streets? Because they don't work for profit and have no money to advertise. The real heroes are changing this world into a better place by helping our community one person at a time, avoiding one foreclosure at a time, saving one bankruptcy at a time.
Maybe the government will do something about this, but it is a matter of education. There is a need to learn this concepts at home, at school, for the good of our country.