By Lucy Lazarony • Bankrate.com
August 26, 2004

As a college student, it's easy to shrug off worries about credit card debt.

Shrugging off the actual debt is a whole nother story.

Ask Bridget Melinn of Okemos, Mich. As a student at Michigan State University, she signed up for credit cards at MSU sporting events because she liked the free T-shirts.

"Every game there's a credit card stand," Melinn says.

Like many college students, she started out using credit cards with the absolute best intentions.

"One credit card turned into two. I used those at first for books and school and necessities like that," Melinn says.

After awhile, other charges started popping up on her card bills.

"I started to use the cards for restaurants and movies, spring break and things like that," Melinn says.

By the time she graduated she'd racked up about $5,000 in debt on seven different credit cards and store cards.

Still, Melinn wasn't really worried. She planned to pay off the debt in a hurry once she got a real job.

Let's say she landed a job making $30,000 a year. She'd live on $25,000 a year and the rest would go to credit cards. She figured she'd be able to pay off her card debt in a year.

"Reality hit once I graduated from college," Melinn says. "And no, you can't pay credit cards off within a year. You have living expenses and other responsibilities."

It didn't help that her first job straight out of school was working as a TV news producer in Arizona. The job paid just six bucks an hour.

And Melinn had to negotiate her way up to that $6 wage. They wanted to pay her $5.50 an hour.

Melinn told her new boss "I can make $7 an hour working at McDonald's."

With her much-lower-than-expected salary, it was tough to make ends meet, let alone make any headway on her credit card debt.

When she landed a better job a couple of years later, she was determined to get her finances under control. A closer look at her credit card bills was all the motivation she needed. On two of her credit cards, the minimum payment she'd been paying was lower than her monthly finance charges.

Despite all her on-time payments, her leftover college debt had kept right on growing. The grip that credit card companies had over her financial life made her furious.

"It was like a slap in the face," Melinn says. "I'm not going to be in credit card debt for the rest of my life. They're not going to hold me hostage."

Her fury made her focus on her credit card debt like never before. She spent the rest of her twenties climbing out of the credit hole she'd created as a college student.

"It definitely was a rude awakening," says Melinn, 30. "And now I don't have credit card debt and I won't charge anything I can't pay off with next month's paycheck."

When she looks back at her student days and all those credit cards, she almost has to laugh. She just didn't know any better at the time.

"I consider it naiveté. I honestly didn't think it would be difficult to pay off once I got my first job," Melinn says.

"I'm not stupid. I just wasn't given that necessary financial lesson early on."

With credit card debt out of her life, she's free to focus on other financial goals for the first time in her life.

"It did keep me from other financial goals. I wasn't ever able to have savings," Melinn says. "I've started my home savings account at 30."

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