I often feel confused when people tell me that they are shocked at the current rate of interest that they are paying on their credit cards. I just cant seem to recall an era when credit card rates were a steady low of any sort. The average for credit card rates itself used to hover around 20% or so. Back in those days if had a bit of luck, you could locate offers well below that particular mark, and indeed you still can. It was in 2005 when the General Accounting Office conducted a survey. In this survey the government office determined that about 80 percent of persons carrying cards from the 6 largest card companies are paying under 20% APR. In itself, this is not such a bad deal when one considers all the bad flack the credit card industry has received over the years. So credit card rates are generally not so high these days but buyer beware! There are still many offers out there that have interest rates higher than 29% and other general fees as much as $39 a wack!
This concept and the current state of things reflects back to the early 80s when Risk Based Pricing was born"Risk Based Pricing" grew into it's own. This system generally permitted card companies to promote cards with lower basic costs and associated fees to cardholders that were not credit challenged while extending more fees to the less credit worthy cardholders to cover the difference. In any case, for various reasons including changes to a firm's inner dynamic to changes in policy, this system does change. A result of this is that people who are more credit worthy are left covering the shortcomings of this model when persons of less than perfect credit do not help to meet the profit expectations of the credit card company when they don't pay their due amounts. This leaves the credit worthy customers with low interest rate credit cards to foot the bill.
Generally, in accorance with the
bankrate.com website, credit cards that contain low interest tend to be represented in what is called the Platinum Card National Rate Average"Platinum Card National Rate Average". Even though fixed rates have pretty much been stable as of late. Recently they did dip down to below 10 percent in early 06, but the variable platinum interest rate has jumped to over 13 percent from 11 percent since 05. Judging from simple interest rates alone, it would make simple sense to avoid variable platinum rate cards to begin with and just stick with fixed rate ones because at no time during the past several years was it any cheaper at all to have a variable rate card based on the National Averages.
It only makes sense the deciding differences would be perks that come included with most adjustable rate offers. It just seems obvious that it is a fact that credit card rewards are deserved for being charged too much interest in the first place.
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Sam Donaldson of Las Vegas, Nevada is the current staff writer for Credit-Cards-With-Rewards.com. A Great source for
rewards credit cards and
low interest credit cards.
