How to Pay Down Your Debt (article)

Today’s article was found on the Yahoo! website, but was written by ConsumerReports.org. It discusses different approaches to paying down your debt depending on you and/or your family’s needs. Enjoy!

[Excerpt]

We evaluate different approaches to retiring your credit-card balances

Americans currently owe $917 billion on revolving credit lines, according to the latest Federal Reserve statistics. Almost all of it is a result of charging purchases to credit cards. About $69 billion of it is currently past due.

We can keep piling on the bad news for debtors and creditors, much of which you've undoubtedly heard or read before. Credit-card issuers are drastically reducing lines of credit -- one analyst thinks that a year from now credit lines will be half their current levels. And despite low interest rates nearly everywhere else, rates on credit cards are increasing as lenders put hikes in place before next year, when new legislation that curbs some abusive lending practices comes into full effect. The depth and length of the current recession is giving lenders another excuse (as if they needed one) to recoup their losses by any means possible.

To read the rest of this article on Yahoo!, click here…