Bad habits can be learned young—and credit card lenders know that students are ripe for picking.

Welcome to campus. College is going to be absolutely fantastic.

But no, the credit-card company isn't offering you a "free" iPod.

Trust me when I say it's going to work out a lot cheaper if you go and buy your own iPod and then throw the credit card application in the trash.

It may, in fact, be cheaper even if you buy 10 iPods and throw nine of them in the trash as well.

(You don't believe me? Ask anyone over 40. They'll look at you and say: "Only nine?")

"There's a lot of temptation with the credit-card companies coming onto campus," says Curtis Chen, a financial planner in San Francisco. "It starts the freshman year. And it's not just the student loans, it's the credit-card debt, that leaves a lot of students behind the eight ball when they graduate."

"A lot of kids have problems with credit-card debt," agrees Becky Wilder Ruthven, a financial planner in Houston "The card companies are approaching these kids with all sorts of freebies."

It's ironic that as the United States tries to extricate itself from the last credit crisis, on campuses around the country we are about to start working on the next one.

Bad habits learned young can be hard to undo – at least, that's what lenders hope.

Many students are ripe for picking. This is the first time they've been away from home and on their own. They may never have managed a budget, balanced a checkbook, or handled credit before.

Ms. Ruthven thinks it's crazy that we drop kids straight into the deep end like this. No wonder so many get into trouble. She thinks parents should use this time to teach their children how to manage finances.

Mr. Chen warns that it isn't just credit cards. Debit cards may be even worse, he says. They make it just as easy to spend money, and they can also be vulnerable to fraud.

Freshmen face a lot of decisions as they settle in. The simplest, easiest one they can make to help their finances is probably to shun cards altogether.

Set a weekly budget, get the money from the bank, get the money from the bank, and pay cash.