With charge-offs, paying off the full balance may not always be your best move. Getty Images/iStockphoto

When money's tight, as it is for many people amid today's mix of rising inflation , growing debt problems and elevated borrowing rates , it's easy for your credit card balances to spiral out of control. And if you fall too far behind , your lender might eventually give up on collecting what's owed and charge off your account . When a credit card company charges off an account, it marks the debt as unlikely to be collected and writes it off as a loss for accounting purposes.

But despite what the term might suggest, a charge-off doesn't mean you no longer owe the money. In fact, charged-off debt can continue to create financial problems for years. This move ca

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