Credit Card Advice

The main tip to reducing your Irish credit card costs is to pay them off every month. But in real life, that’s not always possible. Emergencies come up, and you need time to pay off your expenses. But if you can’t pay off your entire balance every month, the next best thing you can do to keep expenses down is to pay as much as you can, and pay on time. That way you’ll keep your average daily balance as low as possible (which is what your minimum payments are based on), and you won’t be hit with late fees.

If you have a wallet full of credit cards, the most obvious way to keep your expenses down is to pay off and get rid of cards you don’t use. Another option is transferring the balance to another card if that is possible. Most money experts recommend having two credit cards so that you minimize the amount of financial hot water you can get into while having a “backup” card if the other one should be lost, stolen, or not accepted somewhere you need to use it.

One of the best ways to keep your credit card costs down is to avoid cards with lots of “perks” like points, airline miles, or some other incentive. While these cards can work well if you are disciplined, use your card a lot, and pay off your balance in full every month, if you carry a balance, the interest you’ll pay will far overshadow any benefit you’d get from the card’s perks.

So, supposing that you can’t pay your balance in full every month, you usually pay on time, and you’ve cut back to two credit cards. How do you save on credit card expenses? You could use them less, for one thing. It is much harder to be disciplined and stick to a shopping list if you have the extra cushion of credit that a credit card gives you, so taking out cash and using it may be a way to cut down on card use, thus lowering the amount of debt you have.

Other than that, your best bet is to choose a credit card with no annual fee and the lowest interest rate you can qualify for. Once you have that, and you avoid late fees, or over the limit fees, you’ll do best with a low interest rate card.