Sharks in financial waters

Having recently paid the final payment on my credit card, I requested it be reactivated. one would think an average income of $13-16k per year would be sufficient. Their answer is one I find simply disgusting … apparently, making every payment on time, for every amount owed, for over a year warrants as ‘a history of late payments’, and sufficient reason to deny the re-activation

Had I known during my second year of college the things I know now, I never would have applied for a credit card, let alone two of them. Unfortunately, like many naive college students, the promise of security in an emergency makes having a card tempting, and with the tight budgets of students and the ‘adventure’ that is post-secondary education, such emergencies are bound to happen with students often being away from their parents and having to pinch every penny to proverbially make two.

What i do not understand is how there can be any logic in giving a credit card to a student, especially one who has a sole income of a student loan. Most credit card applications specify that an applicant must have a minimum annual income of $15,000, while the average (and I believe maximum) yearly allotment of student loans is approximately $8,500. Another point that comes up in the analysis of whether or not an applicant qualifies is whether or not they are deemed to be financially over-extended. Is it not financial over-extension to need a student loan in the first place? If one requires an $8,500 debt to attend school, and possibility of financial instability is utilized to predict their eligibility, how can it be predicted that there will be enough financial stability to warrant an average $1,000 credit limit, which is standard for ‘student’ cards.

It seems to me that the entire stance of whether or not an application is to be approved or denied lies not so much in the analysis of whether or not the person has financial stability or positive history, but rather whether or not the lender serves to be capable of gouging money out of the applicant through fees and interest. Given the predisposition of a student loan applicant to be in debt, they become the perfect target for creditors set to leech more finances from them, often destroying their credit rating so badly in the process that they can later cite a poor rating as reason for declination once the student has sufficient income to support credit.

And they say loan sharking is illegal.