Credit cards are like relationships. It's sometimes hard to break up and the split may hurt you more than the other party involved. While it may give you all sorts of warm and fuzzy feelings to cut up that credit card, losing the available credit could hurt your credit score and raise the costs of future financing and loans you take out.

Closing a credit card account that you have paid off or don't use seems like a logical thing to do. However, the "credit utilization ratio"…

According to most recent reports, a major consumer group conducted a study that said that it is pretty easy to get your credit card interest rates lowered. 59% of the credit card holders just called the credit card company and got a reduction in their interest rates instantly and the rate that was lowered was somewhere between 7-10 points lower than what they were paying previously. If you succumb to the sky-high rates on the credit cards, very soon you will land up in credit card debt for which…

Although credit card delinquency has become more common during the past several years, most consumers' continue to have a lacking understanding of how it works.

Too many of us don’t know how to avoid or solve this personal financial challenge!

The good news is that once you gain a more complete knowledge of delinquency, dealing with it is actually pretty straightforward.

If one of your New Year’s resolutions is to pay off your credit card debt, be advised that it’s getting harder all the time. That’s because credit card interest rates climbed to record highs last month, reaching an average of 15.22 percent, according to the consumer information site CreditCards.com.

There’s no denying that credit cards can be useful financial tools, but they come with some dangers. While debt is the most obvious risk, it’s far from the only one. There is plenty of debate over whether or not you should use credit cards, especially if you are in debt. If you have credit cards, you want to be sure you are using them to your advantage and avoid costly mistakes.

If you are turning prematurely gray with fear of foreclosure and frantically looking for a way out then consolidation of much of your debts might be a solution to your worries. Opting for a debt consolidation plan will help you to show your mortgage lenders that you take your debt obligations quite seriously and have properly restructured your debt so that you can afford to make mortgage payments on time in future. With debt consolidation you can merge your multiple debts and pay through a single…

American consumers have 609.8 million credit cards in their collective wallets, and the average household carries nearly $8,000 in credit card debt. While credit cards are convenient payment methods, they are not a great way to carry debt because of high interest rates that can change month to month.

Before the housing crisis, it wasn’t uncommon for people to raid their home-equity piggy banks to pay off bills. Plummeting home values and tougher lending standards helped curb that practice, leading some people to engage in a far more disturbing habit: borrowing or withdrawing money from their retirement accounts to cope with financial hardship.

Interest rates are now hovering near record highs, at an average rate of 14.72%. And if your credit is bad enough, you could even end up with a rate as high as 59.9% APR. That’s because while the CARD Act helped crack down on certain fees and requires more disclosures, it didn’t cap every credit card holder’s worst enemy: interest rates. Sure, the new rules prevent banks from raising most interest rates retroactively, but there’s no limit on the rates they can charge…

Bank fees: They’re like a game of Whac-a-Mole. The minute one set is banned, a whole new set pops up. In August, the Card Act banned a variety of fees – including certain overdraft and excessive late charges.