Improving my credit score

anonfemale

Hi All,

I'm new to this and want a bit of advice...
I applied for a loan of £5000 from my bank and was refused.
I was late making a few payments on one of my credit cards in 2007 - on my experian credit report this shows as 3 times i have missed 1 payment in 26 months.
All other credit cards and phone bills etc have ALWAYS been paid on time- no exceptions!
I have a credit limit on the card i had problems with of £2500, and i owe £2300.
I have another credit card that is credit limit of £5500 , and i owe £4200.
I have store 4 cards on there- all nil balance.
I'm a single homeowner and am on electoral role, i'm employed full time on £25k.
My credit score is 808.


My quesions are:
1) Is this a bad score?

2) If i paid lump sums on my credit cards so reduced the amount owed (i can raise around £3000 to do this) would this improve my credit score? If so, which card/s should i pay?

3) Should i cancel the nil balance store cards?

4) What else can i do to improve my score??

Thanks!!

GeorgeUK

I'm afraid the credit score doesn't mean much - different companies have different criteria to calculate it so they may get different results.

How many credit checks are on your file in the last 6 months? 3 is ok but more could start to effect your score.

Can i ask why you need the loan? is it to pay off these debts?

If you post up a statement of affairs, we may be able to find some other ways of saving money for you.
http://www.makesenseofcards.com/soacalc.html

Also, to see which debts to pay off (usually highest interest first) and when they will all be paid, you could try the snowball calculator
http://www.whatsthecost.com/snowball.aspx

When you pay off and threaten to close an existing account, some cards try to make you offers to keep it open such as 0% on Balance Transfers for 6-9 months. If we can reduce the amount of interest you are paying on the cards, the debt will come down much faster. Not sure this is the right time to apply for any new credit cards offering these promotions though.