Ballpark budget benchmarks Here are some common benchmark figures to keep in mind when setting and reviewing your budget.: Your housing costs shouldn't exceed more than 30 percent of net income. Transportation costs should be approximately 15 percent. Food should be about 16 percent of your total budget. You should try and keep utilities around 5 percent. Another 5 percent should go toward unsecured debt, such as credit cards. Personal and miscellaneous items should amount to the remaining 29 percent.

Was 2007 a bad year for you and credit card debt? CreditCards.com recommends paying attention to the fine print on credit card contracts, comparing credit card rates and protecting your identity in the coming year. Here are some easy and not-so-easy steps to take.

Subprime credit cards are issued to customers with bad credit or no credit history. They are sometimes referred to as "fee harvester cards" in the credit card industry. These cards typically carry low credit limits of $250 to $500 and are designed to help cardholders launch or re-establish payment histories.

The proposed Regulation Z revisions cover two different kinds of disclosures designed to warn consumers who make the minimum payments on their accounts. Paying only the minimum amount each month lengthens the amount of time credit cardholders can take to pay off their debts -- and increases the amount of interest creditors earn from accountholders. The Fed proposes alerting consumers on monthly (periodic) statements about the consequences of minimum payments. The proposal requires credit card issuers to: "provide (1) a 'warning' statement indicating that making only the minimum payment will increase the interest the consumer pays and the time it takes to repay the consumer's balance; (2) a hypothetical example of how long it would take to pay a specified balance in full if only minimum payments are made; and (3) a toll-free telephone number that consumers may call to obtain an estimate of the time it would take to repay their actual account balance using minimum payments."

As with the account opening disclosures, there currently are few format requirements for change-in-terms disclosures. Thus consumers generally discover them in notices, amendments or pamphlets seemingly written by a legal whiz but undecipherable to average readers. That will end under the proposals. If the change in terms is one that must be provided in a table in the account-opening summary, it must be provided in a table in any notice of a change in terms. Creditors can also give notice of change-in-terms on your periodic or monthly billing statements, but again, in a table.

Regulation Z requires creditors to disclose all costs and terms before a new credit card's first use. However, according to the board, "Currently, there are few format requirements for these account-opening disclosures, which are typically interspersed among other contractual terms in the creditor's account agreement." The regulators want that to change. They would do away with the option of presenting account-opening information in tiny type legalese. The proposed account-opening disclosure is intended to organize the information in tables and standardize its presentation to allow easier comparisons.

When it comes to disclosing fees, the difference between the old and the proposed approaches is stark. Under the current Regulation Z , fees are grouped in one small box of the larger disclosure table, with one exception, one that illustrates the problem with the old fee disclosure table.

The Federal Reserve Board, as part of its wide-ranging review of credit card disclosure rules, has proposed two different approaches to the so-called "effective annual percentage rate (APR)" -- the amount of interest credit card users actually pay after factoring in finance charges such as cash advance fees and balance transfer fees. This "effective APR" is much higher than rates typically advertised for credit cards. Creditors say consumers don't understand the effective APR, that it's hard for creditors to explain, and that it's "inherently inaccurate."

A proposed change to Regulation Z will end the current practice of allowing card issuers to advertise "fixed" rates that can change whenever the issuers feel like it. Currently, issuers can offer a "fixed" rate credit card -- and change the rate 15 days later or "at any time for any reason." Under the proposal, the term "fixed" will have meaning: If no time period is specified, the rate will remain fixed as long as the account is open and payments are kept current.

Though most of the proposed Regulation Z changes deal with improving consumer understanding through well-designed information tables, one of the most important changes involves time. The Fed thinks creditors should give 45 days' prior notice of any changes in the interest rate or other account terms. Currently, credit card issuers can change the interest rates, due dates and other terms with only 15 days' notice. Under the proposed rule changes, they must also give 45 days' prior notice before increasing your interest rate because of delinquency or default. The board argues that with more notice, consumers will have more time to explore other credit options. Any changes in terms included on monthly statements must be disclosed in a table format rather than buried in the fine print.