FEARS of a recession still won't go away and soon only borrowers with good credit histories will get top deals.
Even though interest rates were held at 5.25pc on Thursday, some lenders and credit card firms are UPPING their rates due to the global credit crunch.
Only last week a City financial watchdog warned that the days of cheap credit are well and truly over.
So if your credit history is a bit dodgy, you are going to find it harder to get a loan or mortgage. Every one of us has a credit rating based on how we've dealt with debts in the past.
If you have been late with payments or defaulted on a loan, you're seen as a high risk and lenders will refuse credit - or make you pay more interest.
But there are lots if things you can do to clean up your rating. First, you need to look at your credit report to find out if there are any problems.
Checking online is easiest. The Credit Expert service run by Experian is free for the first 30 days, then pounds 6.99 a month. It gives unlimited access to your credit report and alerts you by text or email if it changes. This is very useful in preventing identity fraud, as you will spot any new arrangements taken out in your name.
My Callcredit gives unlimited access to your credit report for three months with an pounds 8.95 quarterly subscription. Or you can get a one-off online report from www.equifax.co.uk for pounds 11.95. For pounds 2 all three agencies will post you a Statutory Credit Report.
To stop your rating getting any worse, set up direct debits for existing loans so you don't miss payments. To improve it, close any old credit card accounts, even those with a zero balance, as lenders take these into consideration when working out how much credit to give you.
James Jones, of Experian, said: "If you have moved recently, make sure you are on the electoral roll. Lenders are likely to refuse you credit if not.
"Also, if you have missed payments, you can add an explanatory note of up to 200 words to your credit report which lenders will look at."
Be aware if you're shopping around for credit that simply making multiple searches can affect your rating if you give your name each time. And check any joint arrangements with a friend or partner. If they have a particularly bad rating, it affects yours too. It might be wise to put any future deals in your name only.
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An Emergency Fund in Action: Our $500 Weekend
Direct your browser to just about any personal finance blog, and you’ll be able to find at least one post about emergency funds: why you should have one, how to build it, when you should start, and exactly how much (or how little) you should sock away. What I don’t see a lot of is emergency funds being used for, you know, emergencies. (A planned car purchase is not an emergency.) Maybe they don’t have many emergencies, or perhaps personal finance bloggers aren’t willing to admit it when their warranties expire. Whatever. Here’s some real life for you.Since the day we bought this house, the to-do list has included replacement of the basement door. It’s warped and in sad shape. The jam is a little rotten, and it lets in water during really heavy rain. Still, it opens and closes and behaves in a sufficiently door-like manner that we weren’t all THAT worried about it, until today. Today, that basement door went from a “to-do” to a “to-do now“. You see, Friday night, Boo (the resident cat and benevolent overlord) caught a mouse.For Boo, this isn’t a particularly unusual act. She’s a retired member of a hardware store extermination team, and it probably felt pretty good to shake the dust off the old stalk-n-pounce skills. She is a master mouser. For us, this isn’t so good. Nobody wants mice in their house. It’s just… oooky. *shivers*Dani did some research, and we poked around our basement, and decided that the first important step was to either fix or replace the back door to eliminate the wide gap at the bottom (and the ham-handed repairs of the previous owner). If you have mice, it seems, the first step to eliminating them is to cut off their points of entry. If you have any sort of holes in your house, it’s recommended that you stuff them with steel wool — apparently, mice don’t like the texture, so they won’t chew through it. Mice can enter the house through any hole larger than a US dime — like the yawning gap under our basement door.
Protect yourself against identity theft09Apr08
Identity theft is when someone uses, without permission, your personal information in order to commit any frauds or crimes. Identity theft is a felony that is becoming more and more common. That is because some of us are not very careful with personal information, making the job easier for those trying to steel our identity. We should always be careful with information like Social Security number, credit card number, birth date, employment information, driver’s license number, etc., because if they enter into the wrong hands the consequences can be very serious. People that have experienced identity theft spend months trying to repair what others have damaged, and in the meantime they cannot get a loan or lose a job opportunity or, sometimes, they can get arrested for something they didn’t do.
1 comments:
I have great credit and my credit limit has been lowered on 3 popular credit cards I carry. I also run a financial website: http://www.newedgecredit.com/ and I am even seeing consumers with good credit being turned down for new cards, this is definately tough times for the credit industry.
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