Save money by calling your credit card companies and asking them to lower your rates.

It is a little-known secret that credit card companies don’t wantyou to know. If you call them and ask them to lower your rates, theymight just do it. Of course, it helps if you are a good customer with along history with the creditor and have good credit. It also helps tocarry a moderate balance and make considerably more than the minimumpayment each month. If the credit card company sees you as a low riskborrower and knows they receive monthly interest payments from you(i.e. you carry a moderate balance), they will want to keep you as acustomer.

Initially, the credit card representative will tell you that it isjust not possible for them to lower your rate. At this point, youshould say something like, “Are you sure because I just received apre-approved offer for a credit card with an interest rate that is halfof what I’m paying you and will allow me to transfer my entire balancefrom this card to theirs for 0%. I’ve been with your company for a longtime so I thought I’d see if there was anything you could do.”

The representative will tell you to hold on for a minute at whichpoint she will put you on hold and curse the fact that it was her whopicked up your call. Then she will come back and tell you the good newsabout your new lower rate or tell you to take a hike.

If she tells you to take a hike, you’ve only lost a few minutes ofyour time. If she comes back with a lower interest rate, you have justsaved thousands of dollars a year and it only cost you a few minutes ofyour time.

The credit crunch has made this tactic more difficult than it was inyears past, but if you are a good customer and have good credit, yourodds of getting a lower interest rate are somewhere around 50%.