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Calculating apr on credit card

Hello you wonderful helpful lot.

I've just received a new credit card which has a low interest rate for 6 months then goes up to around 12% after that time. Standard stuff. However when I rang to ask what the apr equivalent was for the first 6 months the young man couldn't tell me, he just kept saying it's 1.9% per month. When I said I wanted to compare the difference he couldn't understand what I was asking, then eventually said that you just multiply the monthly figure by

  1. But that doesn't add up, it isn't cheaper then than the eventual cost, so can't be right. I didn't think it would be anyway as he sounded so vague. Felt quite sorry for him actually - specially when I didn't want to buy all the other financial products he was offering.

Is there a simple formula for calculating apr from monthly rates? I've done a google and all I could find were very complicated figures. Could someone help please?

Thanks

Liz

Reply to
Liz
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It is pretty complicated, but the simplified version is that you just do the compounding calculation, so 1.9% per month corresponds to an APR of 25.3%, because 1.019 to the power 12 is 1.2534.

Just multiplying 1.9 by 12 gives 22.8, which is at least of the same order of magnitude, but 25.3 is a fair bit more.

Reply to
Ronald Raygun

(1+m)^12-1 where m is the monthly rate - (0.019)

It works out at around 25.4%, which as credit card rates go, is nothing special.

Reply to
Jonathan Bryce

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