There’s a financial mayhem going on in Wall Street, Main Street, and in most streets of the entire world.  And chances are that nobody fully understands the ramifications of the actions of the Federal Reserve and the Treasury, but everyone is wondering: “what does this mean for me and what’s the advantage to me?”.
Every situation has some opportunity for those people in the right situation.  One thing that’s clear right now is that credit card companies are trying to “limit their exposure”, which means they are trying to cut the amount of balances on everyone’s credit cards.
If you are on a plan of paying down / repaying your credit card debt as we have advocated many times (see: How long will it take you to pay off your credit card) we’ve got good news for you.  According to the Wall Street Journal, some credit card companies are starting to offering incentives for payments, some of them going as far as matching payments above the minimum payment due, up to $550, which means that if you have money sitting in a savings account while you owe a balance on your credit card, you can effectively double your money by sending an extra $550 payment to your credit card company if they offer you this incentive.
While this is restricted to Citibank for now, expect most credit card companies to offer incentives for facilitate paying down those balances.
In the meanwhile you can pick up the phone and call your credit card company asking if they have any similar programs, and since you have the Customer Service Representative on the line, ask for your own personal ‘bailout’ in the form of an interest rate reduction.

Sources:

- Wall Street Journal
- Boston.com

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Photo Credits: Silas216 (cc)