The San Francisco Examiner offered a couple great credit card debt consolidation tips to help make sure consumers weren’t being taken to the cleaners while cleaning up their own credit.

Surprisingly, there are many pitfalls to rolling your debt into one big payment. Understandably consumers are often in a state of emotional despair when the consolidation takes place, becoming easy prey to unfavorable financial practices or the fine print.

Try to work it out yourself first. There are fees and a credit report hit if you bring in a third party when consolidating debt. But there is nothing to loose if you call up your creditors and ask for lowered interest rates or negotiate one big pay off. These tips here from MSN Money can help you find the gall to roll down that debt ball.

Play the transfer game carefully. If you’re taking debt consolidation under your own wing, a popular way to handle big debt currently riding on equally high interest rates is to transfer the amount to a new or lower card with a better rate. These are often just short-period “teaser” rates. With new CARD Act laws going into effect, you could see big fees for transferring, too, so watch yourself.

Understand how your credit will be hit. If all you want to do it push the issue onto a consolidation company, hundreds of businesses are more than happy to negotiate with your creditors. The risk is now directly linked to your credit report and this consolidation company’s practices: Make sure they pay off your old debtors in a timely manner. Your previous debtors do have the right to report your account was bought off, and you loose that credit history if you close the old account.

The writer of the Examiner article, syndicated journalist Rebecca Livermore, runs a Denver Women and Money column, helping readers to resist impulsive credit card use or file correctly for bankruptcy.

Will the mathematics pay off TARP and other in-house bank debt? If so, this strategy could have other owning bank corporations like Citigroup and Wells Fargo attempting to follow suit or formula.

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