I was talking to a buddy of mine last night and he asked me “What is a good APR for people our age?” I told him that 18-20% is pretty average for people new to credit. An APR of less than 10% is considered above average credit.
Here are some of my cards and APRs:
Chase – 20.99%
Chase Amazon – 14.24%
Citibank Shell - 11.99%
I’ve had my Citibank Shell card the longest, and my Chase card for about a year. You can see how your APR goes down the longer you have the card. Hank over at My Investing Blog answered, How can I lower the interest rate on my card and raise my credit limit
What credit cards are you using and what is the ARP?
March 25th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
Absolutely needed info. It’s pretty ridiculous how they peg it up monthly and CONTINUE to bump it up without your knowledge. Call and harass them or threaten to leave; there are all sorts of other cards that want your business.
Thanks for the link love!
March 26th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
My first credit card was 21, now im down to 0%
March 26th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
Haha. 0%?? Do you mean 10% or do you mean a special introductory APR of 0%?
March 26th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
I mean 0% for 1 year
March 26th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Oh ok. That makes sense. Let me know what the APR is after the 0% rate is up.
Thanks!
March 26th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
I believe it goes up to 12.99 or something. but in a year ill just get a new card with 0 again. Hopefully for a longer time. But for right now 0% and no fees. Ill take it
March 26th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
What card is that? Im thinking about getting the citi platinum mastercard which is 0% for 12 months, and also the capital one card lab for 0% for 6th months.
March 31st, 2008 at 8:07 am
In that case… I have two credit cards with 0%. One is my Discover Open Road, which is 0% for 12 months, no fees. The other is Chase Circuit City card which is 0%, no payments, no fees, for 18 months.
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:41 am
I acutally have 2. One hsbc and one chase. Although I am going to bring my chase balance to hsbc cuz hsbc gives me cash back
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:14 pm
HSBC will not give cash back on balance transfers only purchases. Also when balance transferring, be away of the fees. They sometime charge 3% for a balance transfer fee.
Another thing to be aware of when transferring balances. Payments are applied to lower APR’s before higher APR’s. This means if you have 0% APR for balance transfers, and a regular purchase APR of 15%, any payments will be applied to the balance transfer first. So if you had a purchase on there, you are getting hit with interest on that at 15% for as long as you have a balance transfer.
April 7th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
guys, just keep in mind to not open too many cards at the same time or close other ones at the same time…. you want to have and stick with a card for a long time…. even if u dont use it. it’ll bump up ur FICO score and in the long run give you better interest rates on loans and mortgages in the future. I get in the habbit of calling my CC company and do 2 things with them every 6 months….
first, find out ur rate (cause they do increase it w/o ur knowledge sometimes) and ask them to give u a better rate cause u just got something “in the mail” that looked like a pretty good rate (don’t mention APR or they’ll try to sell u into another one of their cards and thus cease ur current card account and its history/length of account member). You want them to reduce your current interest rate. APRs are great at first, but if u keep on revolving/switch accounts, even if its with the same CC company, but different accounts…then your history is only as long as the time frame of account “ownership”.
second, ask them to increase your line of credit. If you increase ur credit on the SAME account and have it for quite a few years, your FICO score will go really high and thus return you with better interest rates on future CCs/loans/mortgages/etc….
April 7th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
@Mario – Thanks Mario, that is a great point. The one card I’ve had open the longest, is the one with the lowest APR, and the highest limit. Every couple months, I go on the site and increase my balance with no credit report pull. It’s the Citi Shell Mastercard. They allow me to increase my balance by $1500 every couple months.
In How many credit cards is too many? I talk about how creditors look at your credit and what effects your scores. Definitely keep your oldest cards open even if you do not use them. You want a long credit history and closing this account will shorten it.
Although I don’t care what my credit card APR’s are because I haven’t had to pay any interest yet, it’s always nice to know if I do use it, it will be low.
April 8th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
@Vadim – In case you are not aware, there is usually a 3% balance transfer fee with no limit, and a minimum fee of $15 on HSBC cards.
Check your cards agreement before you decide to transfer your balance.
April 10th, 2008 at 7:04 am
Couple of things my apr is 0 on transfers and purchases for one year. My transfer fee is very small, i dont remember what it is off the top of my head but when I transfered my balance it was very small. Also I believe I do get cash back on balance transfers because I have paid off some of it and have some cash back. However, I did make a few tiny purchases with this card maybe the cash back is coming from that.
Also, thanks for the tips mario I’ll def do that
May 15th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
I’m down to 10.99% on my Shell card. Pretty exciting news even though it doesn’t matter to me.
May 13th, 2010 at 11:04 pm
I found this on Bing and just wanted to thank you for the suggestions in your blog post. I will take my time and look at other sections of your site and add it to my favorites.