It’s a new year, so don’t fall victim to the same old habits that lead to tarnished credit and mounting credit card debt. Instead, change your ways of doing business with creditors. Here are some helpful tips to decrease your credit woes in 2008.

First, keep only the credit cards you really need. If you already have credit cards or plan to apply for new ones, be sure to read the fine print on the agreement. Credit card companies will slip details into the agreement that aren’t easily noticed. Read every word, and call customer service if something seems too vague.

Once you start using your cards, keep an eye on your interest rates. You might be paying a punitive rate if you’ve made late payments, or an inflated interest rate if you have cash advances from your credit card. Be clear about which types of charges incur interest rates above your base rate. And if you see that your interest rate has gone up without explanation, call your card company to ask why. They are usually very helpful in explaining charges, and will negotiate better terms with you if you stick to your guns (and possibly threaten to take your business to one of their competitors). You can also ask the card company if they will let you opt out of the higher interest rate, but this means that you can only pay off the balance of your card at the previous rate, not make new charges.

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It can be so easy to think of the funds available to you through your credit card as free money, especially when it’s your first card. You never actually see any cash—you just hand the cashier this piece of plastic that some nice company sent you in the mail, and the cashier gives you your purchases. You don’t see the cash until it starts disappearing from your savings, after you’ve maxed your credit card out and are buried up to your neck in late fees and penalties, and your credit score starts going down the tubes.

That’s why it’s so important that you establish disciplined credit card practices from the first day you get your card. Responsible credit card use can build you a great credit history and help you toward a great future, but reckless credit card use can throw your finances off-course for years. Start on the right foot with your credit card, and side-step the worries. The most valuable piece of advice you can when it comes to responsible credit card use is so simple that many people overlook it: never carry a balance. Especially when you’ve only just started using your credit card, you should never make purchases with it that you don’t already have the money to pay off. This might seem counterintuitive. If you already had the money, why would you be using a credit card? Learning to use your credit card intelligently when you first start out requires a little re-thinking of what your credit card can provide you. You should think of it as a means to build good credit, possibly get rewards points, and a source of funds for extreme emergencies—and that’s all.

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It’s only October, but there is actually less than 82 shopping days remaining until Christmas. Many people are still paying their holiday debt from last year, let alone feel ready to start the holiday gift buying season all over again. Didn’t you make a promise to start your holiday shopping earlier this year, so you wouldn’t be as tempted to rely on credit cards at the last minute? Now would be a very good time to start planning for your holiday shopping. If you can work it into your budget for the next two and a half months, you may be able to avoid the dreaded after-holiday-credit-card-debt issue that the majority of American’s experience at the start of every new year.

If you’ve looked over your cash flow and bills however, only to find the disappointment of knowing you aren’t going to have a lot of additional cash to make your purchases with, at the very least- spend some time finding credit cards that are going to benefit you the most during your holiday shopping- and hurt you the least over the long term.

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People with bad credit histories are in a tough spot. Even if you’ve recently cleaned up your act, it can take a lot of time and work to get your credit score back to a workable place, and the process can get wearing fast—especially if you’re trying to get a small loan or mortgage. So if you have bad credit, and someone sends you a letter that says that they can have your credit score right as rain by the end of the week for just a small fee, you’ll probably sit up and pay attention.

Unfortunately, you’ll also probably be falling for a scam. Every day, companies send out fliers, letters and even make phone calls to people who are badly in debt, promising them that they can make their credit problems disappear. These companies offer different ways of doing this, some of which work, but only very temporarily (a day, at most), while others are just downright illegal. At the same time, they are taking money from people who need it the most.

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