With the Credit CARD Act set to take full effect on August 22, many credit card issuers are reportedly already altering their policies to come into compliance with the law. And, because that law seriously limits some of the fees issuers can charge (including overdraft fees), many banks are also, according to this article, introducing new fees.

What You Might Notice

Make sure you’re reading your credit card statements closely in the coming months, as any new fees will be mentioned there. Here are some you might encounter:

• Annual Fee: This isn’t a new one, but many issuers have abandoned annual fees in favor of inactivity fees, charging customers who don’t use their cards often enough. Becau

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Anyone struggling with debt or trying to rebuild after a bankruptcy filing probably knows how challenging credit card bills can be: though the plastic rectangles themselves may be highly convenient, the monthly payments we make on them often are not.

And, with the economy tighter than the lid on a pickle jar, posts like this one are useful. It outlines some ways to minimize the amount you owe on your credit card without significantly altering your lifestyle (which, for many of us, may be impossible at this juncture).

Steps Toward Less Credit Card Debt

• Pay earlier than you have to: If you have a revolving balance on your credit card (meaning that you don’t pay the full amount you owe each month), interest is charged to that amount every day, so that the longer you wait to pay your bill, the more interest accrues. I

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Contrary to popular understanding, in most cases credit card debts are still dischargeable in bankruptcy without a repayment plan (in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy case).  In many cases, tax debts can also be discharged.   This is not new information, so why am I writing this?   Because not a week goes by that I don’t get a prospective client in my office who tells me they thought that when the bankruptcy laws changed in 2005 (yes, 2005) it eliminated the ability to get rid of credit card debt in a Chapter 7 case (as opposed to a Chapter 13 repayment plan).

This is NOT true.   While it was clearly the intent of  Congress to appease the credit card lobby and make it more difficult to eliminate credit card debt, the new bankruptcy laws which went into effect in 2005 made filing bankruptcy more complicated, but certainly did not eliminate the ability to do so.

Credit card debts are just as dischargeable as they were for at least 30 years prior to the recent law change.  They are not dischargeable if incurred through fraud or other exceptions to discharge (see http://www.bklaw.com/discharge.html for more information on this), but otherwise you can still file a Chapter 7 case (or a chapter 13 or Chapter 11) and eliminate credit card debt.

Income taxes may also me discharged under certain circumstances.   The law

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