Question

I have a normal dropdown which I want to get the currently selected index and put that in a variable. Jquery or javascript. Jquery perfered.

<select name="CCards">
<option value="0">Select Saved Payment Method:</option>
<option value="1846">test  xxxx1234</option>
<option value="1962">test2  xxxx3456</option>
</select> 

Answer 1

$("select[name='CCards'] option:selected") should do the trick

See jQuery documentation for more detail: http://api.jquery.com/selected-selector/

UPDATE:
if you need the index of the selected option, you need to use the .index() jquery method:

$("select[name='CCards'] option:selected").index()