Two new surveys of Americans' personal finances find consumers have room for improvement when it comes to saving for a rainy day or retirement.

And one obstacle to those goals is credit card debt.

Karin Caifa has details in today's Consumer Watch Report.

High gas prices, rising food costs, and a host of other personal expenses can be obstacles to Americans putting more money away for the future.

I have a 401K through work, that's pretty much it says one consumer.

I'm using my savings to like make films and stuff. So that's it, I work and I don't save too much money, says another consumer.

I think there's always room for improvement, obviously, so I do save for retirement, says a third consumer.

A little more than half of those recently surveyed by the Cpnsumer Federation of America, 54 percent, say they have a savings plan with specific goals. Some 43 percent say they have a budget that allows them to save enough money to achieve those goals.

A separate survey of Americans' personal finances conducted by Bankrate.com found for one in four Americans, credit card debt is greater than what they have in the bank.

"The problem that a lot of households are confronting now is that their expenses continue to creep higher and their income is not," says Greg McBride, Bankrate.com Senior Financial Analyst. "And it just makes it that much more difficult to make progress on things like savings and debt repayment."

One approach to tackling that debt is by paying off the debt with the highest interest first, and get a plan in place to cut down debt but still set aside any regular amount of money in savings.