After the mortgage meltdown in mid-2007, lenders cracked down on home equity loans, causing consumers to turn credit cards as a lending source. Credit card debt and delinquencies rose. Credit card companies, feeling the brunt of delinquencies, began cracking down on credit, increasing interest rates and credit card fees and decreasing credit limits.

How often do you set a goal to repair your credit or pay off your debt, work towards it for a few months, then forget about it? It's easy to push goals to the side, especially when they seem unattainable. With the right approach, you can reach any goal, including your financial ones.

A charge-off is one of the worst entries that can appear on your credit report. Creditors typically charge off seriously delinquent accounts that have not been paid on time for six months straight.

There may come a time when you want to close a credit card, but can't find the credit card number. This usually happens when you review a copy of your credit report and notice a few cards that you haven't used in years. Here's how you can get the credit card number and close the credit card.

Many consumers close credit cards after becoming what seems like too delinquent to catch up. There seems to be the notion that closing cards makes delinquency go away. Not only is this not the case, closing out a delinquent credit card will hurt your credit more than it will help.

Whether an unexpected expense depletes your budget, you're going through a period of financial difficulty, or you're simply overspent, it happens to the best of us at one time or another.

Landlords and apartment complexes are among the many businesses that use your credit to decide whether or not let you borrow money or services. Bad credit can cause you to end up homeless, if you're looking in the wrong places.

Maxed Out is a feature-length documentary about the financial industry, directed by James Scurlock. If I hadn't already sworn off excessive credit card debt, Maxed Out would have been the thing to make me do so. The movie is the financial industry's Fahrenheit 911 equivalent.

We're living on a plastic planet, where even vending machines, parking meters and Starbucks branches are now accepting credit and debit cards for everyday transactions. Small wonder that high schoolers -- who were expected to spend $195 billion in 2006, according to a study by the Harrison Group -- hanker for their own charge cards.

What happens to your credit reports and credit scores when you get married? There are all kinds of common misconceptions about merging reports and falling credit scores. Luckily, these myths aren't true. Here are the five most common marriage and money myths