The Easy Way In
With four credit cards to her name, Gabrielle C. Hunter-Rivera '02 says she spent freely during her first year at Harvard, eating out frequently at restaurants and making lots of small purchases at CVS.
"They have those little machines where you just swipe your card," she says. "It makes it too easy."
The hundreds of dollars of balances that were building on her cards never registered on her radar, she admits, until her father discovered the mounting debts this past summer. Only then did Hunter-Rivera begin to clean up her act.
"I'm spending a lot less this year," she says. "I think twice now."
And for Glasgow, using credit cards for purchases became so automatic that he barely recalls the items that led to the debts he's just now paying off.
"Right now I'm in about $1,000 worth of debt and frankly I can't even remember what I bought," he says.
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