<prompt> Human: New to rpersonalfinance . Hi! I apologize for any formatting mistakes or if my post is a little weird in that aspect.I have 22 dollar debt that I forgot to pay when I was doing well, and I still cant pay! I work part time at 9.50hr. I found out yesterday that the tuition payments that my mom has paid late, is in fact in my name and effects credit. Duh. Why did I not realize that. And because of a balance that prevented me from signing up for spring semester, we all had to pay as much as we could. My goal is to pay off that debt as soon as possible, but I dont get paid until next Friday and I need to eat! Aaaand, my goal was to build up credit with a card thats easy to get like the JCP card. Literally all of my coworkers my age got one immediately. Im the only one that got declined. Did I fuck up my credit already??? Is there a way to recover?  <response>: Dont stress out about being declined, they were actually doing you a favor. A department store card is the worst for your age group, because its the fastest way to get way into debt at a very high interest rate. Debt that will take years to pay off.Get a secured credit card, the real kind from a bank. That will be a lot more useful, and you wont be able to spend more money than you have. Use it for up to 25 of your deposit each month, pay the bill once a month as soon as you get it, get into a routine. The secured card is all about developing good money management habits. 