"Your debt has gone up by £340 since your previous total balance"

Money_and_Travel

Clearscore says that, at my last update on 17th October, my Barclaycard balance went up from £340 to £414, but I've always paid it off in full, and my balance is currently at £0 again.

So why does the fact my balance was higher than the previous one, matter?

Isn't spending money on the card, what you're supposed to do?

fatbelly

It doesn't matter one jot

MyRealNameToo

Card issuers send CRAs a point in time snapshot of your balance, for the consumer view its normally updated monthly so all its saying is that this month you'd spent a bit more on the CC then you had the prior month at a similar point in time. 

Lenders get the data from the CRA, they dont ask the CRA to make a judgement on your credit worthiness for them. Ultimately you can only tell if it makes a difference by applying for credit but you would have to be a very marginal case where the difference of £75 of CC balance flips you from an accept to a decline when you have a history of paying it off in full each month. 

sourcrates

They keep feeding you meaningless rubbish so you keep logging on to their site, in the hope you may take out a new loan or credit card, or you may sign up to one of their "credit score improvement deals" or link with one of their partners (for which they get a fee) etc, its all about marketing blah blah.

All the CRA feeder sites do it, they have to generate income from anywhere they can these days.

Money_and_Travel

Would they get anything, if I took out a credit card, and used it like I'm using my current one, ie. paying it off in full, every month?

Money_and_Travel

The only "negative" (and I believe it more of a non-positive), is the lack of a mortgage.

According to Clearscore, I'm at 875 (average for my area 576), with:-

0 - Action Needed
10 - Doing Well
1 -  Monitor

MEM62

Money_and_Travel said:

Would they get anything, if I took out a credit card, and used it like I'm using my current one, ie. paying it off in full, every month?

In short - yes.  

MyRealNameToo

Money_and_Travel said:

Would they get anything, if I took out a credit card, and used it like I'm using my current one, ie. paying it off in full, every month?

The CRA that provided you the link? Yes, they'll get commission for having generated the sale. Last year ClearScore generated £89.7m from such affiliate marketings, similar to the £53m of this site from affiliate marketing. This site has much lower operating costs though and so is the more profitable of the two despite the lower revenue.