Help me improve my credit rating please!

happytails

I am now debt free bar my £700 overdraft. Me and my partner rent and have our first baby due in Feb - looking at saving for a mortgage but our credit rating is bad.

We've never had any store credit or credit cards/loans! Never got a car on credit or anything. We have sky, mobile phone etc on contracts but thats about it.

We are 19 and 20 and i wont be working from Feb so will be on one wage of 22k a yr (job not very stable so dp is looking for another).

Only thing that lets us down that i can see is we've gone over our agreed overdraft limit a few times - last time being this month due to United utilities taking payment a day early (which they informed us 12 months ago :mad: so our fault)

Ideally we are looking at having 10% deposit for this time next year so would like a better credit rating aswell.

Any advice is appreciated
xxx

RAS

With your ages and in rental, any late payments are going to be a problem. Remember at the moment banks will not even lend to people with perfect credit records and years of credit behind them. You really need 3 years history in the current climate, although what the situation will be in a year or two is anyone's guess.

Are you on the electoral roll? if not, get on there.

Scrap sky if you are wanting to save money and get one credit card with a really poor APR and set up a DD to pay off the mnimum every month. Use it a little and actually pay off everything every month. That might help you. Whatever you do, do not use it to buy extra, just to pay for things you would be buying anyway.

happytails

Thanks RAS. So getting a credit card and buying say petrol on it for the month (whilst keeping enough to pay it off aside) and then paying it off at the end of each month? (just want to make sure ive got that right!)

We are on the electoral roll already :j

Sarah