Know How to Lower Your Credit Card Interest Rates?

Know How to Lower Your Credit Card Interest Rates?

by Scott Stadler

Are you currently carrying a large balance on your credit card? Do you ever find it necessary to carry a balance occasionally from time to time? If you can answer yes to either of these questions, now is the perfect time to take a look at your credit card's interest rate and find out if you could be saving big money.

Many times, credit card APR's (annual percentage rates) have a way of gradually creeping upwards while we fail to take notice. It's easy to sign up for a credit card offering a certain low rate only to find the rate has dramatically risen just a couple of years later. The good news is that it's just as easy to reverse the situation if you know how to lower your credit card interest rates. How?

Just Call and Ask

This is perhaps the easiest and also the most often overlooked tactic to lowering credit card interest rates. If you have good credit and have maintained a great record of paying all of your bills early or on time, most credit card companies will be thrilled to lower your interest rate if that's what it will take to keep you as a good customer. Just call the number on the back of your card and see what they can do.

Log In Online and Look for Special Offers

Sometimes the best deals are found online. This holds true for credit cards too. Try logging into your account online and looking for a section covering special offers or promotional offers. The credit card companies often offer interest rate deals right there in the online account center for those savvy enough to find them.

Do a Balance Transfer to a Better Card

If you have little success in lowering the interest rate on your current card, it's probably time to move on to another card that can offer what you need. By transferring your entire balance to another credit card, you can often score awesome promotional balance transfer interest rates ranging from zero percent for a year to a low fixed rate for the life of your balance. Usually these come with a small balance transfer fee, but the money saved in interest alone can be truly astonishing!

Maintain Really Good Credit and the Offers Will Come to You

The better your credit score is, the more likely you'll be to receive the best offers by mail. Credit card companies are known to offer some really awesome zero or low interest deals to new customers with the hope of acquiring and keeping these good customers for life. Some of the very best offers are only made available to a select few with excellent credit. You can take part in this by maintaining superb creditworthiness.

No matter what method you choose to use, knowing how to lower your credit card interest rates can have really fantastic results and save you bundles on finance charges. Keep more of your money!