Credit card data in a study by the web site CardHub show a mixed picture for U.S. consumers.

On one hand, they paid down $32.5 billion in credit-card debt during the first quarter.

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But that represents a 1 percent decline from the reduction in the first quarter of 2013, a 5 percent drop from 2012 and a 28 percent plunge from 2009, when the Great Recession forced a rapid shrinkage in credit-card debt.

On the plus side, the average household credit-card balance decreased $352 to $6,628 in the first quarter this year.

The credit-card default rate fell 0.3 percent to 3.32 in the first quarter from a year ago. That compares to a 12-percent slide last year. The rate "seems to be stabilizing near historical lows," the study says. "A reversal in this trend could lead to a significant credit crunch."

CardHub forecasts that consumers will charge-off $30.5 billion of credit-card debt this year. If that's correct, consumers will have defaulted on $298.5 billion of credit-card debt in the last five years.

Michele Lerner, a contributing writer for Motley Fool, offers several "tried-and-true strategies" to erase credit card debt on DailyFinance.

One is the "snowball" plan. "Pay as much as you can on your lowest balance while you keep up with the minimum on all other cards," she says.

"As soon as that card is paid off, apply what you've been paying plus the minimum (and more if you can) to the next highest balance, and so on" until you've paid it all off.

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