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They Don’t Want You to Compare Credit Cards
By plrprousers | February 12, 2009
Let’s get straight to the point. Credit card companies don’t want you to compare credit cards. They want to get you locked in with a card and have you make the minimum payments possible each month, because that is the way they make their money. However, if you wish to compare credit cards with alternative providers, you could find yourself saving thousands of dollars in interest during the course of it’s use.
Did you know that in most credit card contracts there is a clause that means your card provider can raise the amount of interest you are paying if you simply miss or are slightly late with only one payment? You may think you are on a great low interest rate credit card plan, but if you are slow in making a payment, your rate may jump to 20% or higher overnight.
Obviously, if you have had this happen to you, the best thing to do is to transfer the outstanding amount for that account over to a new specialised balance transfer credit card account which can even have zero interest for the life of the transfer amount. What this means is that you can be paying 0% interest instead of the 20% or even more you might have been paying up until now.
This strategy will not be effective if you use your card for spending, as balance transfer credit cards only have low or zero interest on the transferred amount, and usually have a very high interest rate attached to further spending. This is where the provider makes it’s money from you. If you want a card for regular spending such as groceries, you can reap some great rewards from certain credit card accounts that provide low interest for your everyday spending along with an interest free period, and also rewards according to the amount you have spent.
With any credit card you need to make sure you keep up with, at the very least, the minimum monthly repayment. If you use it regularly, it is recommended that you only spend what you already have in cash and can afford on the card, and pay this amount off fully each month. You can still reap the rewards and you won’t get behind and have to start paying interest.
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