“I don’t know what to do, they keep calling me and I just hit the mute button and go back to sleep,” said Jennifer , 22, a former Iowa State student. Jennifer asked to remain anonymous due to concerns that her family would find out how much she owes.

On May 22, President Obama signed the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009 into law. The act is designed to encourage transparency in the rules and regulations that credit card companies impose on consumers.

For Jennifer, who estimates she now owes about $12,000 on her four cards, she knows exactly how she got herself in trouble.

“I would say it didn’t start happening until 2008 that’s when I started missing payments. This year it’s happened quite a bit,” she said. “Last year I’d had to skip a payment once or twice and now, I was supposed to pay one on the 26th and one on the 7th and it’s just not going to happen.”

Tahira Hira, executive assistant to the president and a member of the national president’s advisory council on financial literacy, said the bottom line was an issue of responsibility on the part of both lenders and consumers. Hira is a member of the national president’s advisory counsel appointed by former President George W. Bush.

“In the last few years we first have lenders who have been irresponsible in providing cards to people who didn’t have means to support those cards and then there were fee traps and things like unfair rate increases that people couldn’t comprehend,” she said.

Hira said it wasn’t just the lenders who were acting irresponsibly, and the consumers should take a fair amount of the blame for not educating themselves on how to use credit.

“In the real world you would hope that we are all professional and both parties would understand the terms of any agreement they entered and we would follow them,” she said. “But what we had instead was on one side the businesses were changing the rules of the game in the middle of the game and on the other side we consumers were not taking the time to learn the rules.”

Jennifer said she got her first credit card when she turned eighteen and didn’t know anything about them.

“I wanted to buy a bicycle for the summertime and I didn’t ‘have any money but I had it planned out that I could buy a $500 bike and have it paid off in two months,” she said. “I picked up a Wells Fargo Credit Card ad the only reason I picked it was because it was connected to my checking account but I never once paid attention to the interest rate and the maximum credit limit.”

Doug Borkowski, lecturer in human development and family studies, said he wasn’t sure whether or not the solution to the problem was having the government step in to regulate the credit card companies.

“I always have a little bit of concern when the government gets involved in things like this,” he said. “Do I think that there were some abusive practices and that maybe there needed to be some type of reform? Yes.”

Hira said she thought it was a great idea that the government pulled all of the credit card companies together and made them act responsibly.

“So a good environment has been created for consumers,” she said. “But will that solve all of the problems? No. The government cannot do for you what you should do for yourself.”

Borkowski said he thought credit card companies did, on occasion, target students.

“I can think back to one time where the deal was you could get a free sandwich at Battles Bar-b-que. All you had to do was fill out a credit card application,” he said.

According to the Credit CARD Act of 2009, card issuers will not be allowed to offer a “tangible item to induce such student to apply for or participate” in a consumer credit card plan.

Borkowski said the reason credit card companies targeted college-aged students was to make sure to be the first credit card in their pocket.

“It really feels like students get thrown into it, I really haven’t seen that they really receive any education or information and I think that’s extremely important,” he said.

Jennifer said she never got her balance back down after paying for the bike she planned on getting.

“So, I knew I was in trouble shortly after I got it when I hadn’t stuck to the plan,” she said. “I always sort of push things off, so if I’m not dealing with it now then it doesn’t exist.”

Hira said this sort of disconnect between spending money is common with credit card users.

There’s no comprehension of the seriousness of the amount of money that you spend,” Hira said. “Your money is not going out of your hand you are just swiping a little card and you have no realization of exactly what you are doing.”

Hira said she thought this tendency in consumers was increased by the system that companies put in place to lure consumers into purchasing things that they do not need.

“We have a tendency to close our eyes and ears and brain and we just follow everyone around us, and you always buy more than what you would have if you just carried cash,” Hira said.

She said she didn’t think the issue was the credit card itself, it was that people were not mindful of the reasons they were doing things.

Hira said she didn’t see any discrepancy between the ways that students spent money versus the ways that adults spend money.

“Young people are a reflection of adults, they come from families and they observe and absorb whatever the people around them are doing,” she said. “I’ve seen phenomenally informed and responsible students and I’ve seen ones who have no inclination to stop and think about what they’re doing.”

Jennifer said despite the stress that her debt has given her, she doesn’t see anything particularly wrong with her debt.

“America is built on debt, so I don’t really see having credit card debt as that much of a bad thing,” she said. “I mean, I won’t be able to get a house or anything on my own until at least my thirties, but I see a way out of this debt.”

Hira said the most important thing for consumers to remember was that they needed to set limits for themselves and realize exactly how much money they were spending versus how much they were making.

“There’s nothing wrong with a credit card, it’s all in the way you use and abuse them,” Hira said.