Rebuilding File - Credit Cards

tomxlisa

eskbanker said:

tomxlisa said:

Yeah I do still have a CCJ on there but it’s around 4 years old now and also got one default remaining which drops off in a year I think, apart from that everything is good

tomxlisa said:
I don’t always clear my balances sometimes I will leave a balance if I’ve just got something which is too much to clear in one go

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I also agree that there’s so many other factors that come into it too when trying to get a credit card, like hard searches too, I’ve got too many of them on my report at the moment which I’m trying to clear down, I guess it’s just gonna take much longer for me to get where I want to be and being offered the other cards, but I think I’m on the right path to building better credit. 

You may well be on the right path but it does seem that you've answered your own question about quickly you're progressing along it!  A CCJ, a default, not always paying off in full, and too many hard searches collectively paint a less than healthy picture, so you're going to need to focus on sorting out the ones you can control (the latter two) while simultaneously waiting for the effect of the former two to weaken, and you should get there eventually.

Does not paying off in full really look that bad on your credit report, I pretty much assumed if your paying more than the minimum every month it should really have a negative on you, I’m guessing paying in full shows you can afford what your getting I suppose but i thought as long as paying on time and getting the green ticks was the main thing to do. 

CliveOfIndia

tomxlisa said:

Does not paying off in full really look that bad on your credit report, I pretty much assumed if your paying more than the minimum every month it should really have a negative on you, I’m guessing paying in full shows you can afford what your getting I suppose but i thought as long as paying on time and getting the green ticks was the main thing to do. 

Paying only the minimum looks very bad on your record.  Paying more than the minimum is better, but paying in full is best of all.  As you correctly say, paying in full demonstrates that you're only using the card to buy things you can actually afford.  Paying less than the full amount can be interpreted as meaning that you're buying things you can't really afford, and are relying on credit.

And, quite apart from any affect on your history, paying in full of course means that you're not paying any interest, which is obviously the ideal scenario.

This applies to standard interest-bearing cards.  If you've got a 0% deal running then this is flagged as such on your credit file, so in that case paying only the minimum is pretty much expected behaviour, so isn't really an issue.