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Lowest interest creditcards aren't always the best deal
When you are searching around for a new credit card don't be fooled by only looking for the credit card with the lowest interest, there are quite a few other factors you should consider also. There could be annual fees, transaction fees, monthly account holding fees, high cash withdrawal interest rates, and if the bank offers a low balance transfer rate make sure you also know the real annual interest rate too as this could be far higher than other cards.
Advertisements will put their low interest rate in big bold letters and display all the other costs in really small letters or in their terms and conditions normally at the bottom of the page. When doing your research you should read everything they put on display as it is illegal for them to hide any charges that you could incur, in other words read beyond the low interest rate in the large font. Other things to check for are if they have a symbol next to any of their rates for example, "low interest rate of 10%*" the star will mean there are conditions placed on that rate. An explanation for the star will be at the bottom of the page normally in small text, so make sure you also read this as you may not be comfortable or might not be able to meet the conditions they have placed on this rate.
Here is an example of why the lowest interest credit card is not always the best deal. Card A has a lower interest rate of 9.5% per annum than Card B which has a rate of 10% per annum. Card A has a monthly account holding fee of $5 and an annual fee of $60, so you are paying $10 a month just to have that account. Card B has no account holding type of fees. So if you are paying off your credit card in full on the monthly due date this means you are paying no interest for the month; however with Card A you have to pay $10 anyway. If you are not able to pay of your credit card in full on the monthly due date then interest will be incurred, for example if you owe $100 then you will be paying interest on $110 ($100+$10) for Card A, and only paying interest on $100 for Card B, so Card B might be the better option overall.
As you can see that having the lowest interest credit card is sometimes not the best option so it pays to do a lot of reading and a few calculations, if the calculations are beyond you then you can use our interest calculator here. You don't want to find any nasty fee surprises a month after you've signed up the first low interest card you found.
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