You use it just like a credit card. If you want to buy something with a real credit card, you select the item you need and take it to the checkout stand. You or your parent swipes the card through a "reader" machine. In a few seconds, you are given a loan, the store is paid and you sign a receipt. In two to four weeks, you get a bill in the mail and you pay that bill for the instant loan you got.

     However, with one of these cards, someone buys the card as a blank. The store people "load" a certain amount of money into the card with electronic signals. When you go to a retail store, you swipe the card the same way your parents do. The cashier gives the card back. He or she will usually tell you much money you have left on the card. You can't spend more than the amount that is loaded into the card.

     If your card doesn't have enough money still in it for your purchase, you can spend all of what is left on the card and then finish paying for your stuff some other way. Banks and stores make extra money because people use most of the money in these cards and then find out there's very little left, so they just throw the card away. Sometimes they throw almost 20 percent of the money away. So use everything that's on the card. The person who gave you the card wants you to have the full amount. So drain it all down to nothing.

     These gift cards are pretty cool. There are no payments later. You don't have to get the OK to get the card. There is no check on a credit rating, which your parents have to go through to get real credit cards, cars and houses.

     At your age, you probably should not have a credit card. Once they are issued to you, they are really easy to use. You have to pay back the loan that is given to you every time you use the credit card.

     These pre-paid credit cards are a good way to learn to use plastic cards. Later, when you are older, you can get a debit or a credit card and you will have more experience with plastic cards. But with a prepaid credit card (that isn't really a credit card), you can't get into trouble with it. When the money in it is gone, it's gone. That helps people learn to budget too. You can use them on trips; even pull money from an ATM.

     You can get them about anywhere - restaurants, department stores, video and DVD rental places, Target, Wal-Mart, home fix-it stores, etc. You can go to these places, load it and give it away as a holiday gift to a friend. Blank ones often hang on metal rods near a check-out counter.

     If your parents get one for you, they can go back to the store or a bank and put more money into it. That's called "reloading" the card. You can use it again until it's empty.

     So enjoy this way of spending that's just as easy, and safer, than a credit card.

Did You Know?

Prepaid cards are a great way to control credit card debt. There isn't any debt!!