The acquisition of credit card debt by college students has long been a topic of concern. This study explores relationships among debt, undesirable academic behaviors and cognitions, and academic performance, through surveys of 338 students in a public university, replicating two past measures of credit card debt and creating new measures of students' delinquency, undesirable academic cognitions or behaviors, and academic performance. This study suggests that students' financial woes are related to how they allocate time and energy in college, as well as how well they perform in their classes and presumably how much they learn. This area has not been studied extensively, particularly in relation to impact on college persistence and graduation rates. Data are cross-sectional, so inferences of causality cannot be made; however, suggestions for future research are discussed.