Sure, free gifts are great. Who doesn't want a free gift? But when free credit card offers come in the mail, we may feel like we're the most important person in the world but we should be careful. When those free offers are from credit card companies, we may want to avoid signing up altogether and simply throw them out! The credit card companies like us because we have good credit. But it could be our financial ruin if we sign up for too many cards!

This is because credit card providers use the concept of risk measurement to determine who need to receive a credit card. And if your credit rating is good, you seem to be a good risk to the credit card providers. So they make many of their offers attractive.

When you get these great offers in the mail, you should consider very carefully before you jump in with both feet and get every credit card that comes your way. Why? Because credit cards are loans and the lenders feel you can only have so many loans out at once before it becomes unmanageable based on your income.

It's a downward spiral: Your credit rating is so good that you're thought of as a great risk. And because they think that you're a good risk, you get many offers. But because you get lots of offers and you sign up? you're thought of as a bad risk! Even if you don't use all of the available credit limit on your cards, the availability is there and that's what lending institutions look at.

And, if you find that your outstanding debts (such as credit cards, loans, or bills owing) have gotten out of hand from excess credit cards, you just might want to consider pulling it all together through a debt consolidation loan. A debt consolidation loan gives you the benefit of getting a fixed monthly payment (rather than an unknown variable payment) and a lower interest rate and usually over a longer period of time to repay.

So credit cards aren't necessarily a bad thing. We need them in this day and age. But what you need to do is approach them thoughtfully, selecting the best and discarding the rest. And if things have gotten out of your control, consolidate your debt to get control of it again.