10 changes to your credit card statement

Transactions and interest charge calculation

A list of transactions. This section will include purchases, payments, credits, balance transfers and cash advances. Examine the transactions carefully for mistakes or fraudulent activity. Call the issuer of your card if you see any suspicious charges.

A list of fees and interest charges. Fees and interest charges will be totaled separately, and broken down by type of fee and type of transaction, respectively. For instance, if you incurred a balance transfer fee of $25 and a foreign transaction fee of $15, you'd see both fees itemized on your statement, and a fee total of $40 for the billing period. Look over this section and dispute any wrongly charged fees.

Year-to-date totals for fees and interest charges. Discover how much you will have paid in fees and interest charges for the current year in this section. Pay down your balance or consider a balance transfer to reduce your debt load.

Summary of finance charges by balance category. This section will show the interest rate, the amount subject to the interest rate and how much interest was assessed for each transaction type -- purchases, cash advances or balance transfers. You may have different interest rates for different transaction types. Because of the CARD Act, issuers must apply payments over the minimum to the highest-rate balance first, but minimum payments can be allocated to the debt with the lowest interest rate. To take advantage of the law, you must make a larger payment than the minimum amount due.