Canadian credit cards

elevature

I'm looking for a new credit card. I currently have a MBNA card with a balance of about $4500 and an interest rate of 18%. I've had credit problems in the past, due to a student loan and a bank that messed up pretty badly. This balance is due to paying off that loan, since I didn't have the actual money to do so and the interest was killing me.

Now, I know that carrying a balance is bad. I'm not looking for a lecture on that. I just need some help finding a new card. I'm able to pay more than the minimum each month on this card, but not much more, and because of the interest I'm not making much of a dent in the balance. Almost all of my money goes to pay for school, and once I graduate and get a real job my first priority will be to get this debt taken care of, but that's a couple years off.

I'm looking for three things in a new card:

Low(er) interest, especially on balance transfers
Guaranteed acceptance (due to the credit problems)
A credit limit of at least $5000

I was looking at the Capital One guaranteed secured mastercard, which is 12.9%, but the maximum credit is only $1500. Is there anything similar with a higher limit? Or would they increase it if I asked them to?

Geek Lord

Find out if there is a way of paying an annual fee in exchange for a lower rate? With Desjardins I pay 25$ a year for 10.5% interest instead of 19%. I don't know how much difference that makes over $4500, but might be worth looking into.

Corvus

I can't say for sure, but I suspect that fact you're carrying around a four and a half grand credit card debt is probably going to make it difficult to get a card with both a higher limit and low interest.

Anyways, have you done the round of the bank websites? They'll all have the credit cards available on there, which will give you the interest rates, but the limits are going to be based on their evaluation of you as a credit risk.