By coinnews 
00:00 Speaker A
According to WalletHub data, over 85% of college students have at least one credit card, and they carry an average balance of just over $2,000. For anyone who’s new to using credit or isn’t sure how to build it well, got Yahoo! Finance’s Kendall Little here with some tips for students. Um, so where can students get started? I mean, people who have never had a credit card, they don’t know where to start, what do they do?
00:28 Kendall Little
Yeah, so opening a first credit card as a student is actually a great way to start building your credit. Even if you have no credit history at all, um, there are still some cards that you can qualify for. One of those is going to be a student credit card, like it the name implies, um, these cards are typically geared toward students. They have no annual fees, and sometimes you can even earn rewards on your spending. Um, but they do still carry those high interest rates that we see from other cards. The second type of card that you might want to consider as a student is a secured credit card. Uh, these are a little different because they require a security deposit to open them, and that’s typically going to act as your credit limit. So whatever you put down is going to be how much you can spend on the card. Uh, and then over time, as you sort of use it responsibly, you might qualify with your issuer to upgrade to an unsecured card and get that deposit back.
01:54 Speaker A
Gotcha. And so once you have the card, what are some of the dos and don’ts of using that credit card?
02:01 Kendall Little
Yeah, so probably the most important thing to remember is to only spend on your card what you can afford to pay off. You know, these credit cards have super high interest rates. We see today interest rates that can go as high as maybe 30%. So you want to make sure that you’re not taking on those interest charges and paying off your balances. Use your card like a debit card. Pay your essentials or whatever else is in your budget as a student and make sure that you can pay it off at the end of the month. Um, as far as building credit, one of the best things that you can do is also pay those bills on time. So you want to avoid a late payment or a missed payment because those are the things that can get reported to the credit bureaus, show up on your credit report, and then ultimately negatively affect your credit score. Kind of along those same lines is credit utilization. That’s going to be making sure that you aren’t spending too close to your credit limits. So, you know, if you have a $500 credit limit, you want to keep that under about 30%, so maybe $150 of your overall credit. And that’s going to be another way to help build your score.
03:45 Speaker A
That’s really I actually didn’t even know that. Latter tip. Thank you so much, Kendall. Appreciate it.
03:52 Kendall Little
Of course.