Generating credit history

oneforthemoney

Hi there,

A question for you wise folks...

I'm currently working abroad... but will probably return to the UK soon. Since I've been working abroad for about 2 years now I have obviously not used any of my UK credit cards in that time. In anticipation of coming back to the UK and maybe the need to obtain credit, I'm thinking I need to generate some activity in my UK credit cards. However, I don't want to use it for day-day transactions as this is too fee-expensive.

Does anyone have any ideas on what I can do to generate transactions? I've been racking my brains and can't seem to come up with anything that will be fairly cheap to do.. e.g. BT out and then slowly pay back... or transactions to paypal, or bookies etc. But all these have heftyish fees...

Also, I've had several years of good credit history before moving abroad to work. Does anyone know if this "old" credit history will be used when I try to obtain credit (e.g. mortgage) or is it based on recent history only (i.e. within the last year or 2)

Thanks for any advice...

CLAPTON

I would have thought that modest usage of the CC abroad would only cost a little. Say, just use every two months for a modest amount would generate a nice set of 0s on your credit reports.
So a typical foreign surcharge is 3% so suppose you spend £20 ...that would cost a surcharge of 3% of 20 = 60 pence...