Honestly, people who charge their cards to the max, go over the limit, etc. are the bread and butter of the card industry. The so called freeloading “good” customers bring little to the card industry.

At 18 a child is an adult, its the job of a parent to make sure they’re ready. Its not the governments job to pass a bunch of special laws to “protect” all these young adults because a few parents didn’t get their kids ready to be adults.

I 1000% agree with your statement “Live within your current means, it’s simpler than you think.”

At least now that electronic payment sent two days before the due date that is held and applied one day late doesn’t result in a rate hike.

In the UK there was a crack down on these fees. Civil law is not allowed ‘punitive’ fees, they are only allowed to collect damages and cost. There is no way that they can claim that sending you a letter and wacking on some interest payments ‘costs’ £30 or whatever each fee is. Thus people have been able to claim back these fees.

It’s ironic that President Obama, who relied so heavily on the youth vote, has such a dim view of young people’s intelligence. But I guess he would know.

Trent mentions a general price rise of 1% as if it’s no big deal, but it is a 1% tax on all consumers to “protect and help” a relatively small percentage of consumers who can’t or won’t help themselves. Add it to the 1-2% state and local sales tax increases we will likely face in the next year or two, plus the REAL normal inflation, plus whatever extraordinary inflation we get from the extraordinary spending now going on, and pretty soon it’s going to add up to real money.

Yes, “Syndicate” is the perfect word. Universal default? You miss a payment on one account and all of them jump to 30%? How is this justified? Not in any reasonable world!

The legalese is indeed on purpose, and it does make it very difficult, if not impossible, for the majority of users to understand. We can’t all afford law school to understand these contracts.

Sorry. This is an industry that is out of control, and has acted so recklessly that they deserve the restraint.

Ok, I can buy that. I think on this particular topic, it’s difficult for me to see giving credit cards to 18-21 year olds as ballooning into a problem serious enough for the government to get involved, but I agree that they have proven they can act recklessly and may need restraint.

I still think this particular provision is kind of window dressing that hurts more than it helps, but in principal I can agree that yours is a valid argument for it.

Still wondering exactly how that happened, myself. But the fact is, I had a part time job, a checking account, and could pay for it on my own. And did.

Shortly after that, I got a Visa at age 18 when I applied for a secured card sorta/kinda on my own. (I have to say sorta/kinda because the bank didn’t want to give it to me even after I made the deposit. The only reason they did was because my mom marched in there and threatened to pull all her accounts if they didn’t give me the card….she didn’t co-sign, she just mentioned that to the manager and lo and behold….the card came in the mail.) I scraped together $1k, got a credit line of $500. The bank really didn’t have any risk in that case, since they could just go take out their money from the deposit if I didn’t pay up.

It became unsecured after a year or two and I never looked back. Haven’t had a problem getting credit ever since.

I’m sure secured cards are still around, even though it’s been decades since I had one. That might be one way for younger people to get a card if this legislation, or subsequent legislation, doesn’t get rid of it.

But I’m not an expert either, so this is all speculation on my part. My point, though, is that the financial sector has proven pretty convincingly that it can’t even be trusted not to act in its own best interests, let alone anyone else’s. And that, I think, is reason enough not to set “freedom for banks to do whatever the heck they want” as the default position.