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MoneySaving Expert - How to Reduce Your UK Store Credit Card BILLS!

By: Susan Clues

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Did you know that lots of the store Cards are charging up to 50x the base rate in the UK!

Your not reading this wrong.. your eyes are not deceiving you, you may just be paying 50 times plus for your store cards. These are the high street 'big names' as well not some small shops trying to pull some sort of scam.

The problem lies in the fact that lots of shoppers do not class these cards as
standard credit cards and the unwary shopper falls into a sense of loyalty to
the store themselves. How many people that have a store and credit card class them as being the same thing? not many in reality.

Store cards normally start off with the standard 'buy now and pay later' and combine the offer with a free interest period of normally between 40 and 60 days. After this free credit period period is over you then start to pay an average rate of anything between 18% and 29% for purchases and 25% upwards for doing a cash withdrawal. I for one think that this is just not worth the costs involved.

Which of the major brands are the worse?

Well, normally it's not who you would expect with the top offender being the 'creation Account Card' (these can be used in various stores and you can find these out via the stores listed within the DUET network list). These cards charge a whopping 30.9% APR!!

Just look at this for a moment... the current base rate is around 0.5%, so how much of your hard earned cash is being lost through the use of these cards? In reality it is a huge amount.

Can you guess which high street well known brands are next in the list at 29.9% APR? Well next in the list are the popular store 'Miss selfridge', 'outfit'. 'burtons', 'Dorothy perkins' and 'wallace'.

Next we have a tad lower rate at around 29% APR.. This may be a little lower but still extortionate.. Here we have some of the other favorites 'bhs', 'new look' and 'oasis'.

The lowest rate I have came across would be around 15.3% APR which is still huge and this was from 'Fortnum and Mason'

So what is the best route to take if you have a store (credit) card?

If you in a position to do so, then I would seriously advise you to pay off you remaining balance on the card as soon as possible. Then cancel the card itself and cut it up.

If you have a large amount of debt on the card and cannot afford to pay it off then don't worry I have a plan for you as well :)

Find the best 0% on balance of transfer 'credit card' (ie. master card or visa) and use that card to pay off the balance on your 'store card' then cancel your store card and cut it up. At this point you will be in a better position to pay off the debt within your 0% APR period without accruing any interest as you would have done with the 'store card'.

Now take your new credit card and cut it up / destroy it, so that you do not have the ability to use it when tempted. Once you pay off the outstanding transfered balance then cancel the card.

This is the best way to reduce your debt and get rid of your store cards.

Hope this was helpful and opened a few people eyes to the 'rip-off' store cards trap that many people unknowingly fall into.

Article Source: http://depositarticles.com/

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