What a week. This Wednesday, the U.S. stock market surged and hit major milestones it hasn’t reached in nearly 19 months. Those of us with investments were finally able to do a happy dance! Very appropriately, the cover of this week’s “Newsweek” issue says, “America’s Back!” It seems that things are finally on the upswing.

Meanwhile, this Thursday was probably the most dreaded day of the year: tax day. Most of us were scrambling to make sure our returns were filed and payments submitted before the clock struck midnight. I was actually quite happy on tax day for the past two years as I received a refund of around $2,000 each time. Then I realized that I was giving the government an interest-free loan and was missing out on around $166 of income each month.

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Unless you’ve been in a coma for the past week, you know that a volcanic explosion in Iceland on April 14 rocked Europe. Flights were grounded for nearly a week in more than 20 countries, leaving countless travelers across the globe stranded, many of whom had to sleep on cots at airports and live on a diet of airport food while running up their credit cards.

Those with travel insurance fared better than those without, but it was a pickle for everyone. Some countries resorted to sending boats to various countries to retrieve some of their citizens and military personnel. People missed weddings, funerals, birthdays, vacations, work and more.

The volcano also crippled the airline industry.

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As you travel this year are you planning to you use credit cards more or less? While for many the answer would like to be less, the truth remains that it is an essential part to travel both near and abroad. With the summer quickly approaching and millions of people are gearing up to travel, credit cards are now a little different than they were last year and some seem to be for the better.

When it comes to travel credit cards this year could be totally different than years past as many changes have occurred within a relatively short period of time. While some changes may seem to be not as good to consumers (rewards seem to be harder to come by for some cardholders), others have been very consumer friendly.

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Lesbian sex, abortion, gay marriage and … credit card debt.

That mixed bag of hot-button topics is just a small sampling of what’s in Esquire’s “Survey of American Women,” released in the May 2010 issue. The just-for-fun study complied the results of about 10,000 women who took the men’s magazine survey online between Feb. 4 and March 3, 2010.

Most of the questions centered around relationships (If you knew you wouldn’t be caught, would you cheat?), sex (If you were or are a lesbian, what celebrity would you sleep with?) and plain old hawtness (Who’s the best looking man in America? Hint: See picture above.) But readers also got a small peek at the financial habits of today’s Esquire-reading women.

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Think that you are the only one deciding to use your credit card less? If so, think again as when it comes to the switch to using debit cards more than a credit card; the cardholders in the United States are not alone. Like America, our Australian counterparts have decided that it is now time to change the type of plastic they have come to enjoy to something that is not as costly to use.

When it comes to overall card usage in Australia it is reported that more than 275 million transactions are record each month (of that an average of 116 million are contributed to credit cards) over the past five years. While the number of card usage is staggering, over the same time period Australian credit card usage has dropped nearly 17% and is expected to drop even more within the coming months. In what seem to be the story across every country, the reasoning for the usage decline does not seem to be surprising. It is due to high interest rates as well as increased fees.

As was the case here in America, it seems that cardholders around the world are starting to move toward living within their means, and using their own money instead of borrowing it from banks. In many cases the use of debit cards has increased dramatically and has taken center stage as the card to use. While no one for sure knows exactly how high or long the trend of switching to debit cards will last, the thing that is for sure is that it is not just one single country that has made the move and many more will probably soon follow suit.