It should always be the aim of consumers to pay less for their credit cards.
In the ideal world of the credit card, as seen by personal finance experts, cardholders wouldn’t pay anything at all for their borrowing.
This can often be the case. Take out a 0% purchase offer, for example, and pay off in full and that borrowing won’t have cost anything at all.
However, some card transactions that do attract fees or other costs are not useless or bad for that reason although, as the title of this article suggests, it’s always preferable and often possible to make these fees and costs as low as possible.
Here are three ways to pay less for your credit card on a day to day basis.
The first point is that card holders should start thinking about this right from the very beginning when they go to compare credit cards.
For example, when you go to look for 0% balance transfer credit cards they all now attract an initial fee which is a percentage of the amount that’s transferred.
Using a comparison site to find the lowest possible fee as well as an appropriately long 0% period is essential for cardholders these days.
It’s worth noting that the typical variable interest rate shown on advertisements for the cards aren’t available to all of the applicants.
Of those that are successful, a third will receive the advertised rate meaning that two thirds will be offered a rate either lower or higher than the one offered in the marketing material.
For this reason, look for the lowest possible interest rate if you’re looking to use a credit card to borrow money over a number of months but budget for being offered a slightly higher rate since this is a real possibility.
To find the highest and lowest possible rates available on a card check the credit summary box on any good website.
The second point is that cardholders can save a significant amount of money just by managing their accounts correctly.
Avoiding silly mistakes such as missing payments can save hundreds of pounds since not only do these attract fees, they can lead to promotional rates being stopped.
Finally, remember that good things come to those who wait.
Those with the best credit ratings are offered the lowest standard interest rates by most card providers so it’s worth building up a bad score with good behaviour while using bad credit rating credit cards.
