Here’s How to Reduce the Interest Rate on Your Credit Cards

This is something that’s well worth doing if you have consistently carried a credit card balance in the past and have never requested a rate reduction. It takes a bit of time (about an hour for a small pile of cards), but it can really save you some serious money in the long run. It’s pretty easy, too, as long as you’re willing to be a bit forceful over the telephone.

Simple Steps to Reduce Your Credit Card Interest Rate

1. Get out every credit card that you’ve carried a balance on in the last year

By “carry a balance” I mean you’ve not paid it off entirely and let the balance carry forward, earning interest. If you haven’t carried a balance in a while, the chance that they’ll reduce your rate is much lower because you’re not a client that makes them money.

2. Flip your cards over call the phone number on the back

Punch whatever buttons you need to push to get to a human representative, then ask to speak to a supervisor. Most first-level people you speak to on the phone have no authority to raise your rate, so you must speak to a supervisor. If they won’t let you, tell them you are considering cancelling your card.

3. When you have a supervisor on the phone, request the rate reduction

Most of the time, they’ll just go ahead and reduce your rate; if not, tell them that you are considering transferring your balance (of course, this assumes you’re carrying one) to a low-interest credit card offering a 0% interest rate – this will often get the company to reduce your rate. If even this doesn’t work, suggest that you are having difficulty making the payments, which will often convince them. If these three tactics don’t work, politely say thank you and hang up.

4. Rinse and repeat for your other cards

Likely, the majority of these cards will wind up with some kind of rate reduction, and every one of these reductions will end up saving you money. Let’s say you have a card with a $2,000 balance that’s currently at 18.9% and you get the rate reduced to 12.9% – that’s a savings of $120 over the course of a year just from one phone call. With the average American credit card carrying household having a balance approaching $10,000, such an effort for an hour can save a lot of cash over the long haul.

The post Here’s How to Reduce the Interest Rate on Your Credit Cards appeared first on The Simple Dollar.