How to Lower Your Credit Card Interest Rate

Special low rate introductory offers are great, but if you need more than six months to pay off your credit cards, a low introductory rate may not be enough. What else can you do?

Renegotiate.

Instead of taking advantage of a temporary low rate offer, why not lower the rates you pay on the cards you already have? Here's how you do it.

Here's what you say:

I just got an offer in the mail from XYZ credit card company (see point 2 above). I don't really want to switch cards, but I'm paying X% in interest (see point #1) to you each month, and I'm going to have to transfer the balance unless you can lower my interest rate.

Now if you've been a good customer, and pay your minimum payment on time, and have a generally good credit history, your credit card company will not want to lose you as a customer. They will probably offer to lower your interest rate, probably to around 12%. They may also offer to reduce or eliminate your annual fee.

Now, 12% may not be as low as the 6.9% introductory rate offer you got in the mail, but 12% for the next two years probably is lower than 6.9% for six months, and then 18% thereafter.

But what if your credit history is not perfect? What if you have missed payments?

A simple phone call to the credit card company won't solve your problem.

You need to pay off your credit cards.

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