Credit Cards Articles

Have you recently paid off a credit card? Do you feel like you have too many? Are you considering closing one or more cards? You may want to think twice before closing your credit card accounts. While cutting back can help you stay out of debt, it could also damage your credit history if you’re not careful. Here are some of the pros and cons that you should consider before closing any credit card: Pros of Closing a Credit Card The most obvious reason for closing a credit card is to eliminate the available credit limit. When you do that, you take away your ability to over-spend on that card and get into credit card debt with it. T Read more…

In an earlier post entitled It All Adds Up, Credit Cards with Annual Fees, I briefly discussed how many credit card issuers were thinking about adding annual fees to their credit card offers due to the changes made by the CARD Act. According to a recent article in CNN Money, it now looks like the first credit card issuer to add annual fees has been named and it is Citi Bank.

How much will this annual fee be? While there is no definitive answer, reports from cardholders have shown that they range from thirty dollars and above. At the moment Citi is experimenting with a range of annual fees, and a spokesperson stated that they are based on Citi’s regular account reviews. F Read more…

Credit card companies will most probably make as many changes they can before August 2010 when the new rules for interest hikes step into effect. So going forward, be sure to carefully read every document that you receive from your credit card company to avoid being caught unaware of changes to your terms.

If your credit card APR does get increased or other terms are changed in ways you don’t like, you do have the option to opt out of the changes within a specified time period. Unfortunately, opting out can be a losing proposition for cardholders. T Read more…

It has gotten harder for Americans to access credit during the current economic downturn as credit card companies cut credit limits, but a new report finds that these cuts have not had a dramatic impact on consumers’ credit scores.

The study from FICO found that 24 million consumers had their credit card limits reduced despite the fact that they did not do anything that would normally cause a reduction in their limit. Of this group, the average credit limit reduction was $5,100 – more than double the amount FICO saw in a survey six months prior.

However, the report also found that this reduction did not create a major change in the credit score for most.

Reductions in card limits were found to have negligible impact on the FICO scores of most consumers in this group, said the study. Read more…