I had two credit card companies lower my interest rate by 1% this last week.  No explanation, just a lowered interest rate.  I think they want their balances paid off faster.  Has anyone else seen this?

If you’re a newer reader you may not be familiar with the Credit Rate Reduction Rally.  One of the purposes behind the rally was to build a movement that is about optimizing interest rates for people paying off debt.  In my case doing this on one of our cards reduced the interest we’re paying per month (which also includes a lower balance from making payments) by $125.00 a month.  That would be like saving roughly $1,400.00 in one year’s time [calculated loosely with the assumption of a reducing balance with minimum payments].  Or three Nintendo Wii’s, several car payments, a very, very nice bottle of wine, a Mac Book with memory upgrade, or a nice donation to a charity.

Have you sat down and calculated how much money you might save by getting your interest rates reduced?  Be persistent, be consistent, and make them change your interest rate.  It could change your future!

My bride came up to me and in her normal, ever so sweet way, told me that our debt reduction plan was insufficient.  Normally this sort of thing would be a good thing, except that I exaggerated… she was ticked that we weren’t further along.  She wasn’t angry at me so much, it was just that she wants to go on a romantic anniversary trip and the debt is hindering that.  She’s fired up.

So she called up Discover, with whom we have a large line of credit [and accompanying balance] that we’re paying off and talked to an employee to find out if they could give us a better rate yet.  They’d told us not until March the last time we asked.  Well, upon asking for a lowered rate the gal on the other end of the phone told her that she would give us a 12.9% rate.  My wife, being fired up, asked for a lower rate than that.  To which she said, “No, I can’t do that.”  But at least my wife tried.

So we’re now paying half as much interest as we were 7 months ago because we were persistent.  The Credit Rate Reduction Rally is going to be semi-annual, but just because the rally is not happening right now doesn’t mean you shouldn’t call and press for lower interest rates.