The important things to know about credit cards

Credit cards can be a useful tool. They are a way to build credit, you can earn cash back or airline miles by using them, and they offer real fraud protection that other payment methods don’t. But like many tools, they can easily do more harm than good. At the end of 2022 Americans had almost one TRILLION dollars in credit card debt ($986 billion, to be precise). And that debt is expensive; the average interest rate on a credit card is now over 20%.

If you want to use credit cards, you have to understand how they work and how to keep yourself from being buried by interest and fees. We have 2 short articles this week to help.

1. Credit card debt is easy to build, hard to get rid of

2. Credit card minimum payments are good for the card company, not for you