We've all heard the horror stories. In fact, you're sure to know a handful of friends or relatives who've racked up an eye-popping amount of credit card debt while in school, and now they're paying dearly for it. As a college student, you may be feeling as though you don't want to get involved with credit cards at all. And while there's a good case to be made for avoiding credit cards at a time in your life when you might be especially tempted to rack up debt, there are also many advantages to using credit cards wisely during the college years.

I've had a free checking account with WAMU (now Chase) since 2004. And while I've never used it as my primary checking account, I did maintain a decent balance while running several transactions through it each month. Frankly, it was just nice to have around when I needed it, and I probably would've never thought about closing my account had it not been for a letter I received from Chase a few weeks ago.

 Dear Creditnet: I recently applied for a home loan and was completely caught off guard by my credit score. I subscribe to a credit monitoring service, so I thought I knew my scores before I began the application process. Boy was I wrong! I thought my Equifax credit score was 668, but the score my banker pulled was 618. He told me they use the Equifax Beacon 5.0, so why is there such a difference? They're the same scores, right? Unfortunately, this 50 point swing is costing me an extra 1.5% in interest. Ouch!

The decline of credit card use this year was apparent in stores, but U.S. holiday spending statistics show 2010 was the year of the online shopper. ComScore reports during the 49 days of the holiday season (November 1st - December 19th), e-commerce spending on holiday gift items increased to over $28 billion in U.S. sales, which is a 12 percent increase compared to corresponding statistics from 2009. Most notably, online shopping holidays like Cyber Monday, Green Monday and Free Shipping Day each saw spending top $900 million in e-commerce retail - statistics that would have seemed unfathomable in our declining economy a year ago.

Travel rewards programs suffered major cutbacks in 2010 as credit issuers faced a slew of new federal regulations, lower profits, and customers who were reigning in credit card spending. As a result, many cardholders, including myself, began ditching their travel rewards cards for those that offered cash back at a fixed percentage. And while I certainly love getting a fat cash rebate check at the end of the year, there's just something extra special about hopping on a flight to the other side of the world for free. It makes vacationing all the better! I miss that, and I'm sure others do too.