A common question that is asked among many people in debt is if they can negotiate with the credit card companies.  Many people don’t even know you can do this but I’ll give you a quick and short answer.  Yes!  You can negotiate with the credit companies and I’ll give you some tips on how you can do it.  It’s not that hard on your part and all it takes on your part is a little bit of your time and a telephone.

Start by gathering your credit cards

The first thing that you want to do is gather up all of your credit card statement and analyze the APR.  We are going to sort them from the highest to the lowest.  So, let’s use an example below and I’ll refer to the example throughout my points.

• Credit Card A:  $5,000 19% APR
• Credit Card B:  $12,000 15% APR
• Credit Card C:  $17,000 12% APR

Now, if this was me, I’m going to rank it C, B, A and mark down each APR like I did above.

Try to get a balance transfer

I don’t know how bad your credit is but if it’s good enough, I would start to look for a 0% balance transfer credit card.  If you can find one for 12 to 24%, that’s the best thing you can do.  Let’s say I apply for a card that has 0% for 12 months and I get approved for a $25,000 credit limit.

Now, I’m going to take all of credit card C and the majority of credit B.  This will leave me with 9,000 in credit card debt on cards with interest.  Now, if you can do this, I would advise that you pay the minimums on the 0% while throwing as much as you can toward the higher interest rate card such as credit card B and A in my example.

If all else fails, start negotiating!

Now, let’s say that we can’t get that 0%, that’s okay!  A lot of the times, you’re not going to get.  I just used it in the example because it never hurts to try.  Now that we have all the credit cards laid out, I’m going to call each credit card company and explain my situation.  I’m going to be calm, cool and I’m going to be honest.  This is what I’m going to say –

I’m going to tell them that I’m having a hard time paying my bills but I’m going to try to pay the minimums.  Is it possible I can get a rate reduction?  95% of the time you’ll get some reduction.  Sometimes it may be a lot and sometimes it may be a little.  Here’s what happened when I made the calls on 3 of my cards –

As you can see, I was able to get some reductions.  It wasn’t a lot but it was better than nothing.  Even if you can get 1% knocked off, this can save you thousands over the lifetime of the loan.

Negotiating isn’t that hard.  As long as you’re calm and you’re honest, you’re going to get somewhere.  Take it from people that have done this before because it works.  Yes, you can negotiate with the credit card companies and no, it isn’t hard.  Grab the phone now and start getting those rates lowered today!