How couldn’t you? When I open my credit card bill now, right there in the middle of the page a big box is glaring at me. In big bold letters it proclaims: Minimum Payment Warning. Have you read yours? It is downright scary. On mine it came out to almost double of what I owed if I only payed the minimum amount due and it took 8 years to pay it off! Who wants to do that? How many laptops do you know that last that long? You will still be paying off the old laptop when you have to start paying for its replacement, and my credit card interest isn’t nearly as high as many others on the market.

The credit card law changes also require the companies to include how much you would have to pay in order to pay off the debt in 3 years. Did you notice how little the additional payment is? Going with the laptop example, this at least covers the lifespan of the laptop according to the IRS. Many of you must have noticed this new feature of the federal credit card laws since a recent survey claims it is motivating consumers to make higher payments.

Who would have thought such a simple idea would help us get rid of our credit card debt?  For a change, some one who helped write the new credit card laws did. We can all breathe a sigh of relief that we have found such an easy aid to help us out of our pain. Right there on the bill it tells us what to do. Three years isn’t such a long time. It is manageable. I wonder if this idea could help with the federal deficit? Maybe if we sent the lawmakers a bill every month, showing them how much they had to cut in order to get rid of the deficit in 10 years versus 30 years, they would take some action. They appear to have hit upon a winner with the minimum payment warning for credit card balances.

Another one of the new credit card rules that looks like a clear winner for consumers is that any payment you make over the minimum balance must be applied to the portion of your balance with the highest interest rate on it. For most of us that will be any cash advances we received. Those credit card interest rates can easily be in the mid twenty percent range. Did you know that most companies applied those payments to the lowest interest rate balances in the past? Guess whose bottom line this new credit card law affects? You are right. The credit card companies.

We all know the credit card companies have to make money somehow and there are still plenty of fees left. They still have the ability to come up with new fees. It is up to us as the consumers to pay attention to what we are agreeing to. The new credit card laws helps us with that as well. The consumers now have the right to opt out of changes in the terms of their credit card agreement. That doesn’t mean, we get to keep the current terms indefinitely. It does give the consumer up to five years to pay off current balances under the old terms and close the account.

The new credit card laws include many other changes. Some of the changes will make it more difficult to obtain a credit card, some are long overdue consumer protections and some just clarify the credit card rules. By the end of December 2010, all of the credit card laws passed in 2009 will be in effect. How will they affect you?