Home | Finance | Credit
With interest rates and consumer spending on the rise and as salaries are not raising in line with inflation, more and more consumers find it necessary to use their credit cards to meet expenses and for other purchase items. According to the American Bankers Association, the average American family carries approximately $8000 in credit card debts. For many consumers using credit cards is unavoidable and the following tips can help you to manage your credit card debt wisely. 0% Balance Transfer: Be on the lookout for 0% APR balance transfer deals with a minimum introductory period of 12 months. Ideally there should be 0% APR on new purchases as well so you can avoid paying interest on your old and new purchases. This option should be used to pay off the balance and not just to defer paying your existing debt. There is often a balance transfer fee attached and depending on the value of the balance being transferred, this fee could be quite high, so you would need to calculate how much you would actually save by transferring your balance to the new credit card. Use cash as much as possible: As more and more merchants provide credit card facilities, it is becoming much easier for you to pay by card rather than by cash. You use your card and make a mental note to transfer the cash at a later date, but more often than not, you find other uses for the cash and end up retaining the debt on your credit card. To avoid this extra debt, use cash to pay for your purchases. If the purchase is not absolutely necessary then hold out until the cash is available. Be aware of the additional fees: When you pay your credit card bill late, go over the limit or use it to withdraw cash, you would have to pay separate fees for each transaction. If you were to do all three in one month, you could be charged an extra $40 at least, depending on the rates of your credit card provider. Save while you spend: There are a number of credit cards available that allow you to save in direct proportion to your spending. It is a new twist to rebate cards. Instead of the rebates going back to you, it is invested directly into your savings account which is attached to the credit card account. Obviously the more you spend the more you would save, but this also means you would have a lot more debt to repay, so you still need to spend wisely. The account gives you a nice reward based on what you spend but you are not encouraged to use this method as your only means of saving. Make smart financial resolutions: To manage your credit card debt you must make a decisive decision to do so, this would involve, spending on only the things you really need and deferring pleasure items until a later date. Watch your debts carefully and make a plan to save and reduce your debts at the same time. Your debt does not have to control you.
Information and Articles: http://www.mastersmba.com
Providing Information on various topics, please browse our other Articles for more informative resources, we house information on every topic imaginable so regardless of your needs you can be assured to find the answer here. If you wish to reprint this on your own website, simply click the "Web Version" in the right menu, and you are presented with a pre-formatted document to use.
A lot of the information is written by the Master Article team, and published exclusively on the MastersMBA.com website, and we do our best to research all information to ensure it's as accurate as possible. However at times we also publish documents given to us by other sources, we do examine these documents to ensure they are as accurate and correct as possible however at times they discuss highly specialized fields making it hard to authenticate the validity of every fact in the document. These are written by specialists in their respective fields, and we do trust their integrity and judgment however it's always a good idea when doing any research to consult a number of sources and form your own conclusion based on a number of view points.
