It has become the new epidemic -no, it is not AIDS or small pox. The debt of consumers has escalated over the past decades due to credit cards.

Are you getting harassing calls from creditors due to late payments? Don’t worry. The majority of college students can relate to your crisis. Credit tends to be a tough concept to understand. How does a number determine what you can purchase and how responsible you are as a consumer?

Banks look at a number, called a credit score, to determine whether you can purchase a house or car or obtain low interest on a credit card or loan. But do people ask why? Why should a number determine one’s life history of consuming habits?

The problem with credit cards is that the interest rates are geared to keep consumers in debt. As a student, I am offered credit card limits with interest rates that bury me alive. The minimal interest rate for the first six months is usually 6 percent, but after the first year, it rises to 14 percent and that doesn’t include the charges for making a late payment. Visa, MasterCard, and American Express spend millions of dollars a year on advertisements geared toward us. Unfortunately, only credit will help to establish credit, whatever that means. Eventually, many of us purchase solely on credit because cash is no longer an option for the majority of consumers.

Many want to keep up with pop culture by purchasing the latest fashionable accessories from Coach purses to the Gucci sunglasses. With a simple swipe of a plastic card, people do not see the end results until the statement arrives in the mail a month later. Unfortunately, it’s too late by then.

Students, in particular, are the main target for banks and card companies because they feed on the necessity and importance that is an education.

They know that they are able to tag high-interest rates to students. The fine print at a bottom of an application can help explain how a card works. Even though it is long and tedious to actually sit and read the hard-to-see print, it is crucial and may help avoid incurring debt.

I stand alongside the millions who have taken out loans and charged cards to pay for college expenses and as the nation’s market continues to plummet, I no longer get the hours of work necessary to pay off my debt. Without a solution at hand, however, neither emotional depression nor Zoloft can be an answer. Although I no longer enjoy picking up the phone to listen to an Indian accent who cannot pronounce my name correctly requiring me to pay my dues, school and life must go on.

A great market depression might seem like the only solution to these credit card monsters, but not in the near future.

Ignoring and ripping the pre-approval notices from Visa fits as the alternative solution that may apply to college students.

Vanessa Guerrero can be reached at [email protected]