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If you can’t sleep at night because of credit card debt worries, you’re not alone. Many people get in over their heads charging things they think they can’t live without.

You don’t need to cut up all of your credit cards. Save your major bank cards, but stop charging needless temptations on them. You need a couple of major bank credit cards to maintain or build strong credit scores.

The credit cards you should cut up, department store credit cards, cost you too much in interest. Plus, these types of credit cards lower your credit scores. When mortgage lenders compute your credit worthiness for real estate financing, they deduct points for unfavorable department store credit lines.

Here are a few things you shouldn’t charge on your credit cards:

1. Gasoline. Why charge something that gets burned up before you pay for it? Think about how much per gallon you pay when you pay interest.

2. Food. Many people use their credit cards to purchase groceries that they pay for over the next year or longer. Also, because it’s so easy to pay with plastic, they buy extravagant and unneeded items. What’s more important–junk food or a good night’s sleep?

3. Clothes. Think before you buy clothes on credit. Don’t charge clothes on your credit cards unless you can pay them off right away. Children’s clothes wear out or they outgrow them before you’ve paid off the credit card debt.

4. Utilities. Because it’s so easy to pay utilities with an automatic credit card charge, many people end up paying for their air conditioning when they’re heating their homes. Put your automatic utility payments on your debit card instead.

5. Automatic services. Examine your next credit card statement. Total up items like cable or satellite TV, Internet services, an other automatic monthly charges. Can you pay these charges off each month or are you getting behind?

Make your life easier. Stop charging consumables and monitor your credit card debt. You’ll improve your credit scores and sleep well.

Copyright © Jeanette J. Fisher

There are many Americans today literally drowning in debt and one of the reasons for this is the relative ease of credit in the form of readily available credit cards. This problem has become so large that even the USA as a whole is addicted to debt and the US as a nation is a debtor nation to many major countries. Thus bad debt should be reduced in your personal finances so that you can start thinking of more profitable ways to employ your monthly income.

This article will highlight three simple but effective strategies to help you reduce your household debt and hopefully put you in better shape to start using the extra money saved from interest payments to make more money for your household via investment.

Firstly, you can consider using a debit card and stop using your credit card. What is the difference you may ask? A debit card is good only for the amount of money that you have in your bank account and will prevent you from splurging on the big ticket item that you saw in the shop front the other day. It also will help you cultivate the habit of spending the money that you currently have and not exceed your means.

Another variation on this idea is to pay for purchases with cash as this will mentally prevent you from spending on credit and losing your rational ability to manage your finances. We all know that sometimes a credit card generates in us this urge to spend and especially when we are under stress, we end up spending more than we should. Using cash or a debit card would help to counter such influences.

Secondly, make it a habit to pay all your credit card bills on time at the end of the month. We all have the habit of procrastination and so the best policy is to pay all your credit card and other bills in full at the end of the month. Did you know that the credit card companies and the banks make lots of money from consumers who do not pay their credit card bills on time based from the interest payable?

Thirdly, we should take some time monthly to examine our credit card bills and then take a highlighter to consider wasteful expenditure and then take efforts to cut down such expenditure. Some usually suspects include a cell phone plan that could be renegotiated so as to save money monthly. Some membership fees can also be cancelled if you are not going to your gym or country club as frequently as you wanted to.

In conclusion, we all love to make more money, but if your monthly credit card bills and interest payments start eating into the amount of money that you make, you will not be able to enjoy the increased income that you are earning. Spend some time considering the above mentioned three simple things that you can do each month and you might start seeing more cash in your bank account that you can use for other things.

Copyright © 2006 Joel Teo. All rights reserved. (You may publish this article in its entirety with the following author’s information with live links only.)