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By Naomi Caine

• Do not withdraw cash with your credit card. The interest rate for cash withdrawals is higher than for purchases. You might even be charged a fee on top.
• Pay off more than the minimum each month. Card companies typically insist on a minimum payment of 2% or 3% of the outstanding balance. If you stick to the minimum, it could take years to pay off the debt. Let's say you owe £1,000 on a card with an interest rate of 12.9%. It would take you 17 years and 4 months to clear the debt if you made only the minimum monthly payment of 2% of the outstanding balance. If you upped the monthly payment to £50, you would clear the balance in 1 year and 11 months.
• Always make your monthly payments on time. At the moment credit card firms charge about £25 for late payments. There's no point in adding debt to debt.
• Stay within your credit limit. Again, you could be stung by a penalty charge if you stray over the limit. The Office of Fair Trading wants to cap penalty charges at £12 and it will hopefully win its case over the summer. In the meantime, you have to watch out.
• Store cards are almost always more expensive than ordinary credit cards. By all means take out a store card to get 10% off your purchases, but pay off your balance in full at the end of the month – and don't use the card again. Resist the sales patter on card protection or payment protection insurance. The premiums are costly and the cover widely discredited.
• If you follow those general rules, you shouldn't go too far wrong. But you could still end up paying over the odds for your credit. So now you have to pick the card that's right for you – and it's not as easy as it sounds. There are more than 1,500 cards, and the cheapest is not necessarily the best. In fact, it might not actually be the cheapest.