Transferring balances to another card and opening new cards gives you the very false illusion that you can get your debt under control. This is a very bad idea. There is no way to address the problem but to tackle it head on and to cease all credit card spending. In the past, you could declare bankruptcy and wipe the slate relatively clean (never 100 percent) and rebuild your credit score over the course of seven years.

However, the government rewrote the bankruptcy laws recently, which means most people have far more limited options to make debt go away. Many more people will have to face the consequences of a series of bad decisions made over the course of many years, and you don't want to ever find yourself in that position.