The problem with credit card agreements? Most Americans can't understand them

Do you find the legalese in your credit card agreements confusing, that you give up squinting at the fine print and throw the document into a drawer? Well, a new study shows that you're not alone. Even worse, some consumer advocates claim that the card companies make it deliberately tough for you to fully grasp what you're getting into until it's too late.

The site CreditCards.com conducted what it calls a "readability study" of more than 1,200 card agreements with the help of software created by Micro Power & Light Co. What they found is shocking: The average card agreement is written at a twelfth-grade level. This wouldn't be so bad, except the average American reads at a ninth-grade level, and only one in five reads above a twelfth-grade level. In other words, the card companies are churning out these documents it knows 80% of its customers won't understand any more than if they were written in Egyptian hieroglyphics.