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An essential part of winning the overall war of personal finance is to manage and eliminate credit card debt. Invest the time in managing your credit card account debt, and you’ll reap significant financial rewards. Not only will you learn to manage that debt, you’ll take steps towards eliminating that debt as well.

Here’s the biggest secret of managing credit card debt: Never charge more than you can pay off in a reasonable amount of time. It’s easy to swipe the card for products and services without considering how much debt you are racking up. You’re not the first person who was shocked by the sky-high bill on a credit card bill at the end of the month. If you find yourself struggling with managing your credit card account debt, consider putting the card in a drawer and using it only for large, deliberate purchases until you’ve caught up on your payments.

Another strategy for managing credit card debt is to review your monthly statement and highlight expenses you regret charging. Make the choice to be aware of how much you’re charging each month. Evaluate your charges, and make decisions based on how you feel at the end of the month when you’re paying for all those purchases at once.

Make all your payments on time

Credit card companies are notorious for charging high late fees. Even if you are in a tough spot financially, you can save a great deal just by making those payments on time and saving yourself the late fees.

Realize the credit card account companies are banking on you making late payments and carrying a balance. This is how the credit card companies make money. Managing your credit card debt wisely includes making sure you pay down as much balance as you can every month. If you carry a high balance and you’re having a difficult time managing your credit card debt, calculate out how much of your hard-earned cash is going toward interest. This knowledge may motivate you to limit your charge card account expenses and catch up on those payments.

Shop around for the right charge card

By comparing APRs, fees and credit limits, you can quickly determine which card offers the best deal for your situation. Once you have a card, don’t stop looking. It’s good to evaluate your credit card situation every six months or so, looking to see if you can get a better card with a lower APR and higher credit limits. If you’re successfully managing your charge card debt (making the monthly payments on time and paying down most or all of the balance each month), you’ll find yourself eligible for better and better credit opportunities. Take advantage of these rewards for good charge card account management and save big on interest.

Use zero-percent and low-interest credit cards with caution. Keep in mind that these low-interest credit card accounts usually change their rates after a short period of time, so read the fine print carefully and mark your calendar when the rate changes. Make sure you will not be penalized for transferring the balance to another card if the new interest rate is going to be higher than the rate on charge card accounts you already hold. If there’s a penalty, don’t sign up for the card.

Playing the low-interest charge card game requires a whole different level of charge card debt management. While it can be a good solution if you are carrying a high balance and need a break from paying interest for a while, you need to plan out what you will do when the teaser APR period is over. If you have a good plan for managing your credit card account debt, you will hopefully pay off the balance before the teaser rate period is up, or you’ll be able to transfer your credit card debt to avoid the higher interest rate.

Be careful not to max out your charge cards, or it will negatively affect your credit score on your credit report. It’s better to have several charge card accounts and spread out the debt evenly between them than to max out one card. This charge card account debt management strategy plays on the way credit bureaus and creditors view debt. If you max out a card, it looks like you need to utilize every bit of credit you can get. If you have some leeway on each charge card account, it appears that you are managing your available credit. This cautilizes creditors to view you in a more favorable light.

Raise your credit limits on your charge card accounts when you can, but don’t increase your spending to any more than half of the limit available. This strategy for managing charge card account debt makes you appear most appealing to creditors, which may lead to better credit opportunities in other areas such as mortgage rates, auto loans and car insurance. Every creditor wants to lend to a debtor who is successfully managing their credit card account debt.

This article is brought to you by www.JemCreditCards.com – More than charge cards, we build financial stability. A great place to compare the best charge card offers including Discover balance transfer credit cards, Chase balance transfer credit cards, and much much more!

written by Blogger Guru \\ tags: charge card, charge cards, credit card, debt

How many credit card accounts do you have in your wallet? What are they costing you? The average American has five or six. That includes bank cards like Visa or MasterCard, department-store cards, gasoline cards and general-purpose cards such as American Express. If each credit card account has a $2,000 line of credit, that means we have $10,000 – $12,000 in credit available to us, on average.

Consumer debt in the United States is at an all-time high. Household spending is rising faster than household income. That means people are borrowing more and more money to finance their spending habits, a lot of it by using charge card accounts. Even though APRs are at a 40-year low, credit card interest is still comparatively high. Those low interest introductory offers you hear about are usually only for six months or a year. Then the interest rate increases to the market rate.

Unfortunately, we have gotten used to whipping that piece of plastic out of our pockets for any little purchase we want to make without much thought to the consequences. Good cash managers try to use credit cards just to pay for emergencies or large expenses, like a big auto repair bill, for which they do not have enough savings. If we have maxed out our credit card limits by making lots of little, nonessential purchases, we may not have the credit capacity to take care of those emergencies or big, but necessary, expenses.

On top of that, most of us have two other charge card account problems. First, we only have enough disposable income to make the minimum payments. Second, charge card account APRs do not necessarily change much when market annual percentage rates change.

How much is all this credit costing you? For the sake of simplicity, let’s just look at one card. Let’s say you have a balance of $3,000 on one of your bank credit cards and the annual percentage rate is 19%. You have to make a minimum payment of 2.5% of the balance every month. A pretty typical scenario. If you do not make another charge on your card, that payment is $75 per month. Of course, that minimum payment will drop every month as you pay down your debt, as long as you never make another charge on that card. What if you just pay the minimum month by month as it goes down from $75 to $69 in 10 months and to $62 in 20 months and so on? If you just make that minimum payment month after month, it will take you a shocking 283 months to pay off that one debt–more than 23 years. Making just that minimum payment each month will have cost you $4,729.44 in interest.

Multiply that by four or five more credit cards and most of us would have a credit problem.
If you decide you can set aside $100 every month to pay off that $3,000 debt, you will have your charge card paid off in 42 months and the interest expense to you will be $1,101.73. That is shaving more than 20 years off your debt repayment and over $3,000 in interest expense.

Look at your credit card account balances, interest rates, and minimum payments. Pick one, preferably the one with the highest APR, and start paying off that debt with as much as you can reasonably afford per month. Then move on to the next one. In the meantime, try to use your charge cards only for necessities and emergencies. You will pat yourself on the back someday for your good money management.

This article is brought to you by www.JemCreditCards.com – More than charge cards, we build financial stability. A great place to compare the best charge card offers including Discover balance transfer credit cards, Chase balance transfer cards, and much much more!

written by Blogger Guru \\ tags: charge card, charge cards, credit card, debt

It is so easy to get heavily into debt on charge card accounts that you within a few months or even weeks you could find yourself not being able to keep up with the repayments. If this is the case, then you should think about consolidating your charge card account debt. Consolidating your debt can make it easier to manage your money problems as well as helping you to save money. Here are some useful hints about consolidating charge card debt.

What is consolidation?

Consolidation is where you take all of your debts and combine them into one debt. For example, if you have 2 or 3 charge card accounts with a balance on them, you could get one credit card to cover all of the debts and transfer each balance onto this card. This way all of your debts are covered in one place and you only have one bill to pay.

How to consolidate?

There are different ways you can consolidate your charge card account debt. One way is to get out a loan in order to cover your credit card account debts and then pay off your charge card accounts using this loan. Then you can pay back the loan over a longer period of time. Although this is good because the APR will be lower than the charge cards, it will most likely take you longer to pay off. Another way is to get a credit card account that has a limit that can cover the debts you have, or at least most of them. This way you can put all your debts in one place and pay them off.

Cards for consolidation

In order to consolidate your credit card account debt onto one credit card, you need to make sure that you get the right card in order to make it worthwhile. Getting a card with a higher or equal interest rate than you currently have will not make any difference. Instead, look for a card with a lower interest rate that will help you to save money and pay off debts quicker.

0% cards

The best cards to get for consolidation are cards that offer 0% interest on balance transfers. Some of these cards offer 0% for up to one year, which will mean that you will pay no interest on the balance you transfer to the card for a year. This can save you a lot of money as well putting all your debt into one convenient place. For example, if you have a balance of around £3,000 to transfer from 15% cards, with 0% for a year you could save around £200. These cards are especially good if you can pay off the debt within the promotional period.

Cancel your cards

Remember, when you consolidate your charge card account debt, it is important to cancel all or some of the cards that you have transferred from. Although cancelling too many cards can hurt your credit rating, it is better to cancel them, as this will stop you from being tempted to use them again and thereby further increasing your debt. If you have 2 or 3 cards with no balance, then get rid of all but one of them so that you have less chance of increasing your debt. If you consolidate your credit card debts correctly then you will make paying your bills easier and save yourself money on interest payments.

This article is brought to you by www.JemCreditCards.com – More than charge cards, we build financial stability. A great place to compare the best charge card offers including Discover cards, Chase cards, and much much more!

written by Blogger Guru \\ tags: charge card, charge cards, credit card, debt