Best credit cards for students

Card debts average $2,200 for students The average undergraduate has $2,200 in credit card debt, according to Nellie Mae, the nation's largest maker of student loans. That figure jumps to $5,800 for graduate students. Since so many student credit cards have high annual percentage rates, the longer these youngsters wait to pay the cards off, the worse it gets. Detweiler points out that by sticking to minimum payments it would take a student more than 12 years and $1,115 in interest to pay off a $1,000 bill on a card with an 18 percent annual rate.If students fall behind in their payments, they get slammed with high late fees. And it's easy for things to get out of hand.
Paying on cards for years and yearsSophia Jackson, a personal finance counselor for Consumer Credit Counseling Service in Durham, N.C., says one of her student clients made an $82 credit card payment on an overdue bill, only to discover that a mere 79 cents of the payment applied to the card's principal. The rest was eaten up by late fees and over-the-limit fees."In that scenario, you could pay on your balance for years and years and your balance would keep going up," Jackson says. She adds that many of her clients are students from area schools like the University of North Carolina, Duke University and North Carolina State.