Candy to a baby...

[Lebenz]

Look who's whipping out the credit card: high schoolers
By Jolayne Houtz

Times consumer-affairs Reporter

Chelsea Paine isn't sure about the interest rate or the credit limit on her Visa. "Maybe $15,000? I could buy a car with this thing!"

The Shorecrest High School senior tries to use her credit card carefully — but "sometimes it's so tempting," she said. "It's this idea you get in your head, like it's easy cash."

Kathy Le, a senior at Sammamish High School in Bellevue, got a Visa the week she turned 18. She uses it "when I know I don't have enough money in my checking account."

Credit-card issuers that have aggressively targeted college campuses — "scattering card solicitations around like candy," one industry expert says — have taken aim at a younger crowd: High-school students are the new frontier for the credit-card industry, consumer advocates say.

About one-third of high-school seniors use credit cards, according to a survey by the nonprofit Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy.

Another survey by Junior Achievement Worldwide found that 20 percent of 18-year-old high-school students have credit cards in their own name. Most surprising: 5 percent of 13- and 14-year-olds have a credit card.

"People are amazingly loyal to their credit cards," said Lewis Mandell, professor of finance at the State University of New York-Buffalo who conducted the Jump$tart study. "It's a race to be first in the teen's wallet."

But are teens ready for the responsibilities of borrowing?

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