Many financial institutions and banks pamper the customers with various kinds of credit cards, making the customers fall into the trap of credit card debts.  The credit cards offered by different financial institutions differ from each other in terms of interest rates, fees collected towards credit cards, penalties for late payments and so on. Unless the customers are aware of all the fees and penalties, they won’t know what they are paying for.  Hence, the terms and conditions provided by the credit card companies should be read with an eye for detail.  The hassles of using credit cards are many as one needs to keep track of payments made through it, time limit for the debt, priority of payments interest wise as well as time limit wise etc.  So it is advised to go in for a credit card debt consolidation, which makes it easy to keep track of the transactions.

The best method to keep off credit card debt is by the credit crunch method:

First step is to jot down the number of credit cards, their available balances, interest rates, minimum payment allowed which is given in the cardholder agreement statement etc.
The next step is to organize the credit cards from the highest rate of interest to the lowest rate of interest.  Then it is necessary to total the required minimum payment to be made for all the cards individually as it is different for each and every credit card.  Then find out the amount in balance after paying the minimum required payment towards the credit card amounts.

 If there is no balance amount left after the minimum payments then it is time for you to think of cutting off unwanted expenditure.   Through the method of budgeting, you can achieve this. Then the plan is to pay the minimum balance for all the cards leaving alone the credit card payment with highest rate of interest, for which you need to pay the minimum amount plus the additional money you have saved cutting down costs.  By this way when the first highest interest rate card is paid fully, continue the same with the next highest interest rate credit card.  Thus you pay the credits on time not leaving any payment plus you cut down the debt on the credit cards gradually.

Some experts suggest the other way round by starting to pay the credit cards with the lowest interest rates, but the fact is that you tend to pay more on the higher rates of the credit cards which means more money you are supposed to pay. If you have paid in time you could have saved that money and pay off other additional cards.