Lowest Rate Credit Cards
People should do their best to get off the credit card habit. They should switch to a debit card. The debit card limits your purchases to whatever you have in the account.
As a reminder of how expensive credit cards are, people should look at the "good" interest rates available. There is a site that lists the best deals being offered by banks on their cards.
I checked this week. The lowest was 7.25%. This is available only to people with high FICO scores. One was at 10%. Most were at 12%. One was at 15%.
These are the best deals out there.
All rates are variable. You cannot lock in a rate. The companies can hike your rate at any time if you do something that is mentioned in the fine print. The fine print is very fine and written in legalese. No one reads it. Card company lawyers know this.
People run up a bill, and then they miss a payment -- not to the card company, but to any creditor. This gets recorded digitally in their credit record. The card company's computer is set to trigger a rate hike whenever this revised entry in the credit record is entered.
The banks borrow from depositors at under 2%. They lend at over 15%. This is the widest price spread in business today. That is why banks love credit cards.
That is why I pay off my card at the end of the month.
For earlier tips, go here: //www.garynorth.com/public/department54.cfm