@Anonymous wrote:
@galahad15 wrote:I have a slightly different perspective than some of the posters here on hypothetically paying minimal interest charges on extremely-low APR cards. My line of thought goes along the lines of: a theoretical "perfect" credit card would (IMO), in addition to having a good rewards program and extra benefits like lost luggage ins., trip cancellation, etc., also ideally have a fixed-rate APR of 4.XX% - 5.XX%. In other words IME, you can't have a true perfect / ideal cc if you don't also have an ultra-low APR; it's part and parcel of the whole comprehensive package of all of the card benefits to be had. As someone so astutely mentioned in a past post on the forum, "the low APR is the [a] reward, in and of itself". To reiterate: an ultra low APR can be one possible form of a type of reward. The closest I have come to a "holy grail" of sorts in terms of good rewards + benefits + exceptionally-low APRs are my BEFCU VISA and PACU MC. If I have to pay say around $30 in interest charges a year to get a card as described above, I'd simply rather pay minimal interest on a small balance, than pay a ginormous AF of $350 - $550 or more. JMHO and YMMV. To each his/her own though, it's all good lol...
I see what you are saying here, but isn't that argument more or less moot if you PIF (and never pay any interest)?
You have an excellent point about always being PIF. Yes I do PIF on the vast majority of my cards. However, in addition to life sometimes being unpredictable in terms of potential emergencies where an exceptionally-low APR card could be very useful in navigating, there are a few cards with low single-digit APRs that I have carried small balances on a short-term basis, in order to extend the amount of time I have to pay them in full. In essence, gaining more time for payment in exchange for a small amount of interest -- using a very low-APR card for short-term loan purposes. Although I can see why if there is never any need to carry a balance for any reason, how it could not be particularly useful. Sometimes life happens and so I guess it can be kinda nice in mho to have a universal, all-in-one card with low APR, rewards, and benefits, all together comprehensively. In such an event of an emergency situation, etc., rewards also could (in theory) potentially offset the amount of interest incurred to a certain extent, much the same way many posters on myfico like to talk about benefits and credits making up for AF-based cards. Even if rewards on a super-low APR card still can't fully make up for the total interest charges, one could say that every little bit of cashback rewards received still helps...
Why do I fish for low APR reductions? Because crap happens in life that isn't always planned for. I pay my cards off every month but let's say my AC burns out and I have to shell out $5000 for a new one. I have the cash in the bank to buy it outright or I can charge it but I am out of 0% offers. I call the banks see if I can get a good 0% offer for a year chuck that AC on credit card keep my $5000 in the bank earning it's piddly 1.15% interest but I'd rather sit there and earn that and pay down my AC in a year than take the immediate $5000 hit. Same goes for family member passes away 3000 miles away and I need to get there fast, rent a car and pay for hotel. I'd rather carry a 0% balance than spend the money out of the bank.
Another good reason again I am out of 0% offers. I know such and such banks like to see you carry a balance and pay it down over time to have a better chance at CLI. I call said bank ask for APR reduction throw something on the card pay it off over a good few months and watch the because of your great payment history we have upped your line emails come in. Has happened with both Discover and FNBO had a couple 0% offers threw $1200 on each of them started paying them down slowly and bang 2 nice cli from both banks un asked for.
Before trying that trick I had those cards and had only gotten cli by hitting the button on Discover, I am not even sure if FNBO has and increase button.
Unlike some, I carry a balance from time to time. Not huge ones but something. I ask if APR can be reduced and if offered I accept. Nothing wrong with that. Again, they make something off of me so its not its not a 2 way street 
By the same token there's cards where I've asked and they said sorry we don't lower APR on this card (Amazon) thats cool, and I get it. Its a high rate card and its because of that that its the card I pay in full when I use it.
IMO its a good idea to have a low interest rate card because life happens.
@Anonymous wrote:I'll count myself along with OP in believing that aiming for low APR is a waste of time.
As for the "emergency" angle, that's why you have an emergency fund. So you don't *have* to go into debt when an emergency occurs. In truth, when you're having an emergency is the absolute *worst* time to start going into debt. That's the best way to turn a short-term emergency into a long-term morass.
My wife and I long ago made a pact that the first time we were tempted to carry a balance is the day we cut up all of our credit cards and go on a strictly cash basis. In fact, the moment that we have total credit card balances greater than half of our current non-retirement savings, is the day we go CC-free.
Too much risk.
Chris.
Even a substantially-sized emergency fund can only go so far, if someone has say a serious or catastrophic medical emergency, the kind that costs tens of thousands of dollars or even more to recover from. Also a person could potentially be in a situtation where multiple components of their HVAC system need to be replaced or they need major and expensive dental work to be done, again costing up to tens of thousands of dollars. An emergency fund is finite in that once it's been depleted, it's no longer available and has to be sufficiently replenished before it can be used again.
@iced wrote:
Saying that a low APR is a reward is like saying that something on sale for $100 instead of $200 is saving me $100. I'm still spending $100, just as people who are carrying balances on a card with an APR are still paying interest. The only time where carrying a balance is rewarding is when the APR is sufficiently low as to make not paying the balance earn more money than paying the balance (i.e., putting the funds into savings to earn more interest than the interest charge on the balance would be). Given that line is currently right around 1%, the only time this realisticly makes sense is on 0% APR cards.
The comparison of paying $30 in interest vs. paying an AF also makes no sense. Interest isn't part of the cost of owning a card or accessing its benefits - it's a penalty for not paying one's debts on that card in a timely manner, regardless of whether or not that card has an AF. It's also optional; paying even one cent of interest is a voluntary choice by the user, not a mandate by a bank. No card to my knowledge requires that someone must pay some minimum amount of interest annually.
As for the larger question at hand, my personal opinion is that, excepting the case of a 0% APR card, there is no benefit whatsoever to lowering an APR as PIF is not subject to interest in the first place. I understand the argument for having a lower APR just in case of emergencies, but for me personally, the whole point of having emergency savings is to anticipate and mitigate such incidents. Carrying a balance that charges me interest on any card, at any time, for any reason is a failure on my part to plan properly.
I agree that having emergency savings is extremely important. However, we have to keep in mind that realistically, even an emergency fund of $18,000 (just for example) is still not likely to be enough to cover the exponential medical costs incurred if someone were to hypothetically end up getting hit by a bus tomorrow, was seriously injured, and was in the hospital for an extended period of time, and required months of medical treatment to recover from. Primarily because the costs for such a kind of emergency would probably go up to as high as something between $50,000 - $100,000 or thereabouts? That's why I mentioned in an earlier post that emergency savings are unfortunately not inexhaustible, and not everyone may be able to afford to fuily-cover a catastrophic emergency event solely from their savings.
The other thing to keep in mind -- if an exceptionally-low APR is truly not a reward from a cc lender, or at least an incentive of sorts to the borrower, why is it that it is (usually) so much harder in terms of UW to get a card with an APR in the low- to mid-single digits? 
As far as I am best aware from what I have observed on the forum, the UW seems somewhat easier for rewards cards with high, double-digit APRs from say 16.xx% - 25.xx%+. The cards may have excellent cashback rewards or benefit perks, such as the CSR or similar cards, but the APRs themselves are typically astronomical, whereas qualifying for the very best rates on low-APR cards can sometimes be more difficult. To provide a few examples and IME, I required a 740-750 FICO for my Unify cards at 5.99% V and 8.99% F, and 730+ for my PACU card at 7.5% F. (Unfortunately I'm not 100% sure atm what the mininum FICO score needed for my BEFCU card is.)
ETA: Simmons Bank is another example of a very low-APR card with extremely high UW standards (AFAIK).