From student to cardholder: What every new grad should know about credit cards

Submitted by Scott Cowlin11:41AM / Monday, June 09, 2025Print Story | Email Story

As the strains of pomp and circumstance fade, many new grads are trying to figure out how to manage life in the 'real world.' Not surprisingly, money management is—or should be—at thetop of the list of things to consider. While it's true that having savings provides financial security, credit cards play a bigger role in getting you closer to living the post-school life you want.

That's because credit cards are essential to establishing a credit rating, which in turn impacts how likely you are to secure an apartment, be approved for a cellphone and plan, or get a car or personal loan. Without a credit rating/history, even a generous chunk of change in the bank won't help you begin forging your own path.

But before you sign up for the next offer that pops up on your screen or lands in your mailbox, it's important to recognize that that little piece of plastic comes with big responsibilities. If you don't manage it properly, you can end up digging a hole instead of building a future.

Some key dos and don'ts to building good credit and avoiding debt include:

Dos:

Pay your bill on time and in full: This is the single most important factor in building a good credit score. Aim to pay off the entire statement balance each month to avoid interest charges.
Set up automatic payments: This is the best way to ensure you never miss a payment and avoid late fees.
Keep spending in check: Experts recommend spending only 10-20 percent of the available credit to establish a strong credit score.
Monitor your credit report and credit score regularly: This helps you catch errors, identify fraud, and track your progress.
Read the fine print: Make sure you understand the terms related to interest rates, fees, and grace periods to avoid 'surprise' rate hikes and fees.
Weigh reward options against your spending habits: To make the most of rewards and points options, review your current spending to identify where you spend the most money consistently. Look for cards that align with your spending and offer the benefit you prefer.

Don'ts:

Carry a balance from month to month: Interest charges can accumulate quickly, and rates can even climb if you don't pay down your balance, trapping you in a cycle of debt.
Max out your credit card: Pushing your credit to the limit can lower your score.
Apply for multiple cards at once: Applying for too many credit cards in a short period can negatively impact your credit score and increase your risk of rejection.
Ignore statements: Review your credit card statements to identify billing errors, fraud, eliminate recurring charges, and track interest and fees.
Make late payments: these will greatly impact your future financing and will stay on your credit report for 7-years.
Use your card for cash advances: While credit cards offer easy access to cash, they typically come with high fees and interest rates.

Getting your first credit card is an important step in your financial journey. How you manage it today will have a lasting impact on your credit history and financial stability for years to come. If you're uncertain how to choose or manage a card, talk to a trusted financial advisor. Your future self will thank you.

Scott Cowlin is Pittsfield Cooperative Bank’s vice president of relationship banking. He has been in banking and helping customers with their finances for more than twenty years.

Youth For The Future: Adwita Arunkumar

By Breanna SteeleiBerkshires Staff
05:14PM / Saturday, April 18, 2026

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Williams Elementary School fourth-grader Adwita Arunkumar has been selected as our April Youth for the Future for her mentoring of a younger child.

Youth for the Future is a 12-month series that honors young individuals that have made an impact on their community. This year's sponsor is Patriot Car Wash. Nominate a youth here.

Adwita has cortical visual impairment; she has been working with her teacher, Lynn Shortis, and her, paraprofessional Nadine Henner.

"My journey with CVI means that I learned in a different way. I work hard every day with Miss Henner and Miss Lynn, to show how smart I am," she said.

"Adwita is a remarkable student. She's a remarkable child. She has, as she shared, cortical visual impairment, which is a brain-based visual processing disorder, which means the information coming in through the eyes is interfered with somewhere along the pathways, and we never quite know what's being interpreted and how and how it's being seen," said Shortis.

"So she has a lot of accommodations and specialized instruction to help her learn."

Recently Adwita has chosen to mentor 4-year-old Cayden Ziemba, who is also visually impaired.

"I decided to be a mentor to Cayden so that she can learn some new things. I teach her how to walk with the cane, with the diagonal and tap technique, I am teaching her Braille," she said. "I enjoy spending time with Cayden, playing games and being a good role model."

Shortis said the mentoring opportunity came up when Cayden was entering preschool at Williams, and they introduced her to Adwita.

"Adwita works really, really hard academically. She's very smart, but there are a lot of challenges in that, because of the way that it's so visual and she's a natural. She's just, it's automatic," Shortis said. "It's kind of like a switch is turned on and she becomes this extremely confident and proud person in this teacher role."

Adwita also has been helping Cayden on how to use her cane on the bus and became a mentor in a unexpected ways.

"Immediately at the start of this year, she would meet Cayden at the bus. She has taught Cayden how to use her cane to go down the bus stairs. Again, Adwita learned that skill, so it wasn't something I had to say to her, this is what you need to have Cayden do. She just automatically picked that up and transferred that information," said Shortis. "Cayden is now going down the bus step steps independently with her cane. And then she really works hard with Adwita in traveling through the hallways, Adwita leads her to her class every morning, helps her put her things away and get ready for her morning."

Adwita said she hopes Cayden can feel excited about school and that other students can feel good about themselves as well.

"I want them to know that Braille is cool to learn. You can feel the bumpiness with your fingers. I want people to know how you can still learn if your brain works differently sometimes. I need to have a lot of patience working with a 3-year-old. I need to be creative and energized," she said.

She hopes to one day take her mentoring skills to the head of the class as a teacher.

"I want to become a teacher and teach other students when I grow up. I might want to teach math, because I am great at it," she said. "I also want to teach others about CVI. CVI doesn't stop me from being able to do anything I want to. I want students to not feel stressed out and know that they can do anything they want by working hard and persevering."

Her one-to-one paraprofessional said she likes seeing the bond that has grown between the two girls, and can picture Adwita being a teacher one day.

"I do see her in the future being a teacher because of her patience, understanding and just natural-born instinctive skills on how to work with young children," Henner said.

Shortis also said their bond is quite special and their relationship has helped to bring out the confidence in each other.

"The beauty of it, there's just something about it their bond is, I don't even really have a word to describe the bond that the two of them have. I think they share something in common, that they're both visually impaired, and regardless of the fact that their visual impairment differs and the you know the cause of it differs," she said.

"They can relate. And they both have the cane. They're both learning some Braille. But there's something else that's there that just the two of them connected immediately, and you see it. You just you see it in their overall relationship."

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