Instead they have announced plans that could leave two million vulnerable borrowers paying top rates of interest on their debts.

The Department for Business, Innovation And Skills had proposed a ban on unrequested rises to credit limits, an increase in the minimum borrowers should repay each month, and an end to surprise rate changes.

Credit card firms have rejected all three requests.

A fourth proposal was to change the order in which debts are repaid which could cut the time taken to repay and slash the interest charges.

Banks have accepted only a small part of this. There are 66m credit cards in the UK.

With the majority the most expensive debt you incur is paid off last.

When you make monthly payments they are first used to repay 0% balance transfers.

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Your credit rating plays a vital role in your ability to be approved for secured loans. It is ideal to have a credit score over 700 with the max being 850, although most banks only require a credit score of 620 for some loans. It is easier to get secured loans such as a mortgage or car loans then an unsecured personal loan. In these cases if your score is below 680 your odds of being approved are slim. Even if you are your interest rate will be very high, the lower your score, the higher the interest rate.

Getting a secured loan, such as a home loan, in Ireland when you have bad credit can be a challenging task. Most people unfortunately do not know what their credit is really like nor their credit score. They are unaware that most of our purchases and financial transaction are stored on a computer and sent to the Central Database.

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If you haven’t seen the movie Maxed Out, go watch it now (you can stream it on Netflix). Not to say that there’s anything completely revelatory about it – we all know that the credit card industry is predatory and heartless by nature. But Maxed Out highlights how dire the situation really is. And the issue doesn’t fall squarely on lack of legislation and or poor personal restraint – it’s about the whole package: how credit is marketed, how credit card companies profit, how credit card companies treat their customers and the political attitudes towards the credit industry.

One of the most apt characterizations of the credit-industrial complex was by Harvard Professor Liz Warren (among others) who likened consumer lending institutions to drug dealers. Warren says

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Whether it is beginning of a trend or simply just the case of having good fortune, the month of December was one that gave credit card issuers a reason to smile. This is because for many of them charge-offs showed a decline from previous months. While this was not the case for all of the major issuers, hopefully this will continue into 2010.

Those that saw a decrease in December numbers from November include JP Morgan (Chase), American Express, Citi Bank, and Discover. As for the numbers Chase reported charge offs at 7.11 percent from around 8.81 percent and American Express saw a slight drop to 7.10 percent from 7.60 percent. Citi stated theirs drop to 9.56 percent from 10.29 percent and Discover said their numbers dropped to 8.68 percent from 8.98 percent.

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There are several credit card companies in the market with several kinds of deals. It means you can find a card with ease, but the problem is that cutting the best deal is not a child’s play by any stretch of the imagination. There are several factors that go on to make your credit card the most suited and enable one to get the best deal.

The things to look for are the basic rates that one will end up paying, the annual fees and the incentives that one can get in.

The interest rate can be the typical 15.9% APR which is an extremely competitive rate. The first 12 to 15 months are completely interest free which enables one to use the card and yet not accumulate added interest on it.

The credit card that gets one 0% balance transfer for the first year is not going to burn a hole in one’s pocket. The

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