Watch Out! Those Credit Card Interest Rates are About to Change
August 28, 2007 by Miranda Marquit
Filed under Finance
The credit market crunch isn’t just about home mortgage loans. It’s about issues across the market. And, quite honestly, credit has been a little too easy to come by lately. Mortgage lenders are hardly the only culprits in this carnival of fallout resulting from shoddy lending practices. Credit cards are right up there as well. And here’s what the companies plan to do about it.
Credit card interest rates to change
Take a look at the notices coming in the mail regarding your credit cards. You will probably notice that interest rate changes are about to descend upon you. Your fixed rate may be changing to a variable rate. Your variable rate is probably going up. And those sweet intro deals? Well, they are shifting from 0% interest to something between 2.9% and 7.9%.
Tougher credit card lending standards
Credit card companies are also preparing to tighten standards. I know, I know. Any tightening at all is an improvement. Were there even standards before? But now, few card companies are looking for new customers through direct mail. (There will probably be plenty on college campuses, though.) And it will be more difficult to increase your credit line.
These are probably good developments. For those of us who don’t carry balances, the interest rate changes shouldn’t have an effect. But for everyone else with credit cards, this could be almost devastating.
I agree. I have wondered how long it was going to take. Also if you notice the credit card companies have changed from accruing the interest off the balanceat the end of the month to accruing interest based off of a average daily balance. This happened to our company with a month that had no purchases. Not right!
And how! You do have to be careful with that stuff, you have to watch closely for double cycle billing as well. Unfortunately, it’s going to get harder and harder to find the good credit cards from here on out.