Improving my credit score

ddavis

Hi All,

Just a quick question really...

I'm trying to improve my credit score so that I can clear an old overdraft with a loan. I won't need to do this until March next year so that gives me a while to sort it.

My score was very low at the start of the year (lots of searches) but in 2 months time there will be 0 searches within 6 months. By March next year it'll be 1 within 12 months.

My question is, is it better to have an overall debt to available ratio that is low, or on an account by account basis?

My current debt to available is about 65%, but mostly because I only owe Littlewoods < £500 but have £6,000 available. Should I ask Littlewoods to reduce my limit even though that would push up my ratio to about 90%?

Cheers
DD

bottleofred

Hi ddavis,

Your amount of credit used is a percentage of what you have used compared with what credit is available to you. For example if you had a catalogue and credit card account with a total available credit limit of say £10000 and owed £6500, then you've used 65% of your available limit. In my experience, companies can get edgy as the % used of the available limit increases, so I would suggest leaving it as it is, although someone else may have other/better suggestions.

ddavis

bottleofred wrote: »

Hi ddavis,

Your amount of credit used is a percentage of what you have used compared with what credit is available to you. For example if you had a catalogue and credit card account with a total available credit limit of say £10000 and owed £6500, then you've used 65% of your available limit. In my experience, companies can get edgy as the % used of the available limit increases, so I would suggest leaving it as it is, although someone else may have other/better suggestions.

Cheers

That was always my understanding too, hence why i've never changed it. But somebody said to me the other day that when I apply for my loan I may be rejected because they'll wonder why i'm not using up the 5k that's already available to me.

Hence my confusion!