Credit Scoring

njdouglas

Hi,

I'm not sure if this is the right forum or not but it seems as good as any. I'm married with a mortgage in joint names. The mortgage (a 2 year discounted self cert tracker) with Platform returns to its full rate of 2.0% above the base rate in april 2009. It's currently 0.69% above base rate.

I have a salary of 25k which is my only income and my wife does not work but stays at home to look after the young kids. She receives £540 odd yearly in child tax credits and about £1000 yearly in child benefit. As ouir second son is only days old this will increase to £1080 for child tax credit and £ 1500 for vild benefit giving her a total yearly income of approx £2600.

My wife has a next account, mobile phone in her name but no other cards other than a joint current account in her name. She has missed the odd Next payment as its no setup on DD and we sometime forget to pay the minimum amount like we did last month. I have now cleared the account and the balance is zero. Mobile phone is by DD from the joint account

I have 3 Credit cards, 1 store card (kwik fit) and a current account. The store card and one credit card are at zero balance and never used. One CC is at zero balance but I intend to balance transfer onto this from the other card which has a high Interest rate. All payments are via DD so I never miss a payment.

With a mortgage renewal on the cards for Apr/May, I have a few questions that I hope someone can advise me on:

Should I be closing the three zero balance CC's to free up credit availability?
As my wife has probably been scored badly by Next for at least two missed payments in 6 months, should I be applying for the new mortgage in my name only?
Should I also transfer the child bnefit and Child tax credit to me for the mortgage application?

I guess I should also now check both myself and the wife's credit score prior to the mortgage application so I can amend any errors in time.

many Thanks

Neil

MurrayMint

Hi,

I'm sure the experts will be along shortly, but just wanted to say that I'm sure the CB and CTC have to be paid to the main carer, which is obviously your wife, so you won't be able to transfer them to you anyway. But I don't think it would make a huge difference i.e. I don't think they can be used in a income multiplier, but can be considered as 1 x their value per annum if really needed - hope that makes sense?

I don't think it's a bad situation actually, certainly a lot better than many right now. To my knowledge, existing debt is treated as follows;
total income - (1 years worth of minimum payments to service existing debt) x income multiplier = how much mortgage you can get

HTH
MM