34% in survey say credit card terms have changed

Credit card terms change

Nearly 34% of consumers said their credit card company had made changes to their card accounts, according to a survey commissioned by consumer education website Credit.com.

More than 1,000 adults were interviewed in a telephone poll conducted Feb. 20-22 by GfK Custom Research North America.

Of those, 15% saw an increase in their interest rate, and 11% noticed an increased minimum payment requirement. Rewards programs were reduced for 8%, while 9% reported their due dates had changed, 8% had their credit limits lowered, and 7% said their accounts were now closed. The answers total more than 34% because some respondents saw more than one change.

The survey had a margin of error of 3 percentage points, Credit.com said. Respondents were not asked to consider a specific time frame when forming their answers.

-- Tiffany Hsu

EMPLOYMENT

Traffic surges on career websites

As job losses mount, more people -- including those who are still employed -- are turning to career-development websites, a new study found.

Nielsen Online reported a 20% increase in unique visitors to job-search and career-development sites in January -- 49.7 million, compared with 41.5 million a year earlier. The unemployment rate was 7.6% in January, the highest in more than 16 years.

People 65 and over represent the fastest-growing group among visitors to job sites.

CareerBuilder.com and Yahoo Inc.'s HotJobs site were the two most popular sites, followed by Monster Worldwide Inc.'s Monster.com. CareerBuilder.com is owned by Microsoft Corp. and newspaper publishers Gannett Co., McClatchy Co. and Tribune Co.

TRAVEL

One road atlas vs. individual maps

If one of your resolutions for 2009 was to save more money, consider these penny-pinching travel tips:

* Instead of buying individual fold-out state maps for every place you visit, invest instead in the latest road atlas for the entire United States and Canada, and keep it in your car. Print out city and other, more detailed maps from your computer.

* Although you can't bring bottles of water through airport security, you can bring empty bottles. Rather than paying high prices for bottled water at the airport, bring your own reusable bottle, send it through security empty, and fill it up at a water fountain on the way to your gate.