Uncontrolled spending habits and unrestrained usage of your credit card can land you in very big debt trouble. Any issue about debt is quite grave. Although it initially starts with just some amount of money borrowed that you need to pay back, with time that amount borrowed builds up into a humongous sum which can be almost impossible for you to pay back in full. This is because most unsecured debts, that is traditional loans and credit cards have very high rate of interest on them.

Remember the old commercials in which a consumer wallowed in embarrassment after his card was declined? Thanks to the CARD Act, those days are back: Issuers must now get a consumer's explicit permission to spend above the limit. No permission? No approval for that transaction. Over-limit fees are also capped at $25 ($35 if you go over twice within six months), less if you went over by just a few dollars. In response, issuers including American Express, Bank of America and Citibank have eliminated over-limit fees altogether.

Business cards aren't covered by the CARD Act, a loophole that merits extra attention for anyone with a so-called corporate or business card. That means these cardholders won't receive advance notification when interest rates rise, and payments won't be allocated to highest-interest rate debt first. Some issuers have voluntarily adopted some of the law's provisions on their business cards, but note that the word "voluntarily" is key. "These protections could go away at any time," says Curtis Arnold, the founder of CardRatings.com .

For people younger than 21, getting a credit card got harder with the CARD Act, which requires applicants an adult co-signer or proof of income for applicants between ages 18 and 20. That narrows the pool of available cards significantly. American Express and Capital One don't allow co-signers, and any card not specifically marketed to people with limited credit could saddle a young, inexperienced applicant with interest rates approaching 25%.

What cards will and won't do for customers today is significantly different than it was even a year or two ago. Finding a card that offers the best of the recent changes without the costs isn't easy. Many of the drawbacks are buried in the fine print (yes, there's still lots of that). SmartFinanceTips and a team of experts dug through the cards to find the best new ones that might be worth a place in your wallet.