Too stressful in facing your credit card debt? I believe the new law has brought you some good news. On 22nd August 2010, the Federal Reserve Board has implemented the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure (CARD) Act of 2009 again. Let me share some new ideas with you so that you can make use of them to overcome your financial difficulties.

• In the latest amendment, the Federal Reserve Board has placed caps on the late fee charges. If you have dragged your credit card payment for the first time, your bank or your card provider can only charge you the penalty with the amount of not more than $25. However, you need to bear in mind that if you make more than one late payment in a 6-month period, the late fee can be increased to $35 for every subsequent late payment. Hence, you must make sure that you don’t pay bills late. If not, you have to bear more costs every month.

• Under the new rule, the late fees can no longer be more than your monthly minimum amount owed. For instance, if the minimum payment stated on your credit card bill is $30, your late fee must not be more than $30. When you receive your monthly statement, you are advised to check your penalty carefully. Never ever let your bank or card issuer to take advantage on you.

• In order to reduce the credit card debt, most of the card holders have reduced or even stopped swiping their cards temporarily. With the new rule, the card holders will not be charged an inactivity fee for not using their cards for new purchases or new transactions. In other words, the card providers are not allowed to charge additional fee if the card holders do not use the cards for a certain period of time. Even if you are knee deep in credit card debt, you don’t need to cancel your account. What you need to do is to stop using your card until you have cleared off your outstanding balances.

• Effective from 22nd August 2010, all the card holders will not be charged multiple penalty fees for a single transaction by the card issuers. For instance, if a card holder fails to clear his or her payment check on time and the check is bounced, the card provider is not allowed to charge both a returned check fee and a late fee. This is to protect the consumers who are facing financial difficulties from suffering additional burden.

• For card holders whose annual percentage rate has been increased since 1st January 2009, you must pay extra attention. With the new amended act, if your lender increases your interest rate again this year, the lender must explain the reason for increasing the rate clearly by providing written notice. If no notice is given, the card holders have the right to ignore the increment of the interest rate.

Now, after going through with you the latest amended act, I strongly believe that you can make use of the law wisely to overcome your financial hardship.