Wednesday, July 14, 2010

WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY LOW INTEREST CREDIT CARDS?

To understand Low interest credit cards, it is imperative to know what exactly is a credit card and how are the interest rates calculated.

Credit cards imply what they literally mean; to put it more simply they are cards which provide credit to the user or consumer. Now the practical entailment is that a credit card user is given the financial freedom or a line of credit from where he can borrow money to purchase goods or entail services, without having the immediate financial qualification or affordability.

But all this comes at a price, which is defined as the credit card interest rate.
Interest is charged on the amount borrowed by the user and is continued to be charged until the user pays off the amount in full.

Example: Suppose the user has availed of a credit of say $500. But he repays an amount of $499 before the billing cycle ends. Though the remaining amount is a measly $1, yet the user will be charged interest on $500, starting from the day of purchase to the day he repays the balance of $1.

The method of calculation is as follows: APR /100 X ADB/ 365 X NUMBER OF DAYS REVOLVED, where APR is annual percentage rate and ADB is the average daily balance.

Now it is easier to understand what a Low interest credit card is. Credit card companies offering low APR values are the Low interest credit cards.

Low interest credit cards are the best option for business entrepreneurs, who are looking for huge amounts of credit for a pretty long time. There are various banks offering 0% interest for 12-15 months after getting the credit card activated.

Consumer credit cards offer as low as 9- 13 % which is quite lower than the usual credit cards in the market. These are suitable for people who cannot manage to pay off their credits completely every month.

For people who can afford to pay back all their credits every month, there are low interest rate credit cards, but the criteria here is to have a great credit score.

This brings in the next question, how to improve the credit score? There are many methods to improve the credit score, and few of them are listed here. First try to get all the entries corrected, next checking for identity theft or fraud and if matters are totally out of hand, it better to consult a loan specialist.

Check your credit reports

Some of the practical solutions to remove debt from your credit card are listed below:

Check your credit reports:

It is imperative to sit down and take some quality time off your work schedules to check the credit reports. Chances are that you will definitely find some errors or wrongly entered information on it. These errors though look small in the report can cause a major effect on your negative credit score by simply adding up each time.
All personal and official information should be corrected and if there is any change in the old information, it is necessary to get those updated immediately. If you have changed any jobs recently or even changed your residential address, you need to provide the latest and correct information on your credit report.

Look at any negative reports:

Look carefully to find out any negative or bad reporting on the credit report. The maximum time limit is 30 days for the credit bureau to check on and verify any negative information. If they are unable to do so in this time period, they are forced to remove all the negative records. Check if any of the disputes or negative information has passed the given time limit. If they have, then report it immediately and the credit bureau will erase it out of your report forever, setting you free of that negative marking. Which when simply put means that you can delete the negative records and increase your good rating.

Speak to your creditors:

There has been no problem invented on the planet Earth, which could not be solved by discussion and communication. Take the initiative and call up your creditors. Request them to lower the interest rates. If everyone would keep on expressing inability to pay back the debt, credit card companies would go bust. Something is better than nothing is the policy, usually embraced by these credit card companies. They will definitely take required action and reduce your interest rates on your outstanding debt. Surveys done in America, show that the reduction rates offered by credit card companies, on the outstanding debt was anywhere between 5 to 6 %. And when that means a reduction in the rates from 16% to 10 %, it surely makes a huge difference.



Learn to Bargain:

There are lots of options which credit card companies offer to new customers to entice them. Some offers may mention about a low fee or totally free transfer of credit at a lower rate of interest. If you have not received any of those offers already by post, check out the internet. There are a myriad of credit card companies offering such bargains on their websites. It’s not necessary to change your creditor, but at least you can collect this information and then speak to your credit card company. If they have not already reduced the interest rates as mentioned in the above step, then they will definitely reduce it now! Companies don’t want to lose out to competitors.