cnbc's personal finance expert carmen wong ulrich joins us now from new york. carmen, good morning.are we going to see happen here? >> good morning. we've already been experiencing huge changes to our credit cards and terms. we've seen our limits reduced and rates raised, all this in anticipation of the card act which goes into effect next month. between now and then it is very, very important to pay attention because there is not going to be a major release basically giving us all of the information on the card act. go to whitehouse.gov, search card act. it has all the terms there. but bank by bank they're going to make their own changes. here's the thing. fixed will mean fixed. overdraft fees and overdraft protection you'll have to opt in. there are a lot of things can you do. there are a lot of things you need to pay attention to when it comes to your credit cards and statements between now an february. >> again, the credit card companies had several months to get ready for these changes. in the interim we saw some practices that a lot of people describe as dastardly. strange fee

nbc's carmen wong ulrich joins us now.t's the key indicator that investors, wall street, everybody's looking for in the week ahead. >> we are looking for numbers to not just make a drop which we saw in the past month 262,000 fewer folks looking for unemployment benefits, we are looking for a reverse. we're still talking over 400,000 folks going after new unemployment benefits, 4.9 million taking in unemployment benefi benefits. we are looking for a reverse of that which will probably go into the summer or fall we'll see those numbers shift and see a lot of growth, hopefully in the six-figure numbers. >> what's the betting from most economists? that, yes, we will get to economic growth in the months ahead or are they essentially taking the view of the obama administration which is essentially saying we may still have some rough months ahead? >> i think there is no doubt we'll have a lot of rough months ahead. some analysts are saying during the spring and in the summer we'll see more unemployment changes. but i got to say t