Improving a relatively good Credit Rating

taff086

Hi,

I checked my credit rating using the free trial at checkmyfile.com - and was pleasently surpised to find that it's actually not too bad. Callcredit is 800 and Equifax is 807. I am actively paying off CC debt, and so have 2 questions about improving my rating.

1) The credit report shows 2 late accounts (a long time ago now, so hopefully not too significant) and 6 clean accounts. Some of these clean accounts are no longer used, such as store cards. I have always been told (and agreed) that closing unused accounts is much better for your credit rating... So my question is whether it's better to have these clean accounts listed, or to close them down?

2) There is lots of information on this forum and on the interweb to help people (quite rightly) improve a poor credit rating. But is there any info on how to improve a medium credit rating? Other than actively paying off debts? Obviously I've made mistakes in the past with running up the cc debt, and missing those 2 payments, but I'm hoping for a mortgage sometime in the next couple of years, so want to do all I can.

Thanks a lot!

--Long time lurker, first time poster! --

Thrugelmir

Closing accounts does not result in history disappearing.

With regards to a mortgage focus on saving a good sized deposit. Shop around at lenders including local building societies. See if any are offering incentives. Most well known is Nationwide's Save to Buy. Where using the scheme gives a few brownie points.

taff086

Thanks - that Nationwide Save to Buy account looks good. Still concentrating on removing my debt - but will definitely look into opening an account with them.

Hazzinho

Don't use check my file, get the £2 reports from the CRA's direct. Also ignore the scores they have no bearing on your credit worthiness.

taff086

Ah yeh, thanks. I kinda figured that out after a bit. I mainly used it for checking old store and credit cards I'd forgotten about, and found an old (and unfortunately empty) bank account linked to my parents address.

A bit of house cleaning was in order!

The_Boss

It's not possible to say that you have a relatively good credit rating because universal credit scores/ratings do not exist.