Financial help please. 1st time buyer

Spartacus72bc

Hi. My partner and I are soon to be buying our 1st property. We are currently busy sorting out our finances ensuring everything is upto date.
Both our credit scores are good.
My credit utilisation is currently around 60%.
I have a littlewoids account that I want to pay off and close but I am unsure whether this would damage my credit score.
I have a high credit limit on Littlewoods and closing the account would boost my credit utilisation up on my file.
What would you recommend I do? Pay it off but keep it dormant or just close it.

Thanks in advance.

glosoli

Your credit score does not matter one bit, but what is actually on your report in terms of late payments, defaults, and that type of thing.

The only difference it could make is if it had an impact on your affordability or not.

There is so much hysteria and misconception regarding credit scores/experian marketing tricks it's high time someone came out and clarified it.

ViolaLass

The littlewoods account presumably has a high interest rate on it. Pay it off.

kingstreet

This level of micro-management simply isn't necessary.

Conduct your credit commitments well and you won't have any problems from limits, utilisation or whatever.

If you pay something off just before a mortgage application, enter the cleared balance and tick the 'to be repaid on or before completion' box so you can be certain the lender knows it has been repaid. The credit system doesn't work in real-time and it might take weeks or months for your lender to see the balance is now £0 due to delays in the provider updating your account and the lender taking its data feed from its selected CRA(s).

Spartacus72bc

Thanks for the replies. I am paying the account if it's only a small amount anyway. It's the closing of the account I was uncertain about. I read somewhere that your credit utilisation should be below 50% which I'm assuming will give a good indication of affordability. If I close the account I thing my utilisation will go as high as 80%

glosoli

Mortgages are much less reliant on this type of thing because its much more of an indepth analysis, with full expenditure checks and income actually being verified through payslips. I guess that information is more relevant if your applying for a credit card through tesco or something.