How to Improve Your Credit Score Fast UK

[Music] hey guys today I'm doing the credit score video I'm just gonna be talking about how you can improve your credit score and how I improved mine my credit score is now 999 on Experian with the Experian boost which I'll come on to later and for me it was really important to get my credit score in the excellent range just because when it comes to mortgages and applying for loans they do look at that and obviously you want to put yourself in the best position when applying for these things a credit score is a three digit number that indicates how reliable you are at borrowing and repaying money ranging from very poor to excellent in the UK there's three different credit reference agencies and each of them have a different scoring system but they base it around the same kind of things they look at your borrowing how quick you pay things back and loads of other things which I'm going to get onto before I get on to how to actually improve your credit score and the elements that they look at it's really important for you to know what your credit score is it's right now and if you guys don't know you can check your credit score for free I use Experian and Credit Karma I'll leave their links below but there's so many different free websites that you can sign up to they take your basic information it only takes about five minutes to sign up and you only really need one the only reason I have two is because I feel like Credit Karma is more useful and it gives you more tips whereas Experian makes me feel good because they've got this Experian boost thing and if you connect your bank account they look at your you know kind of incomings and outgoings and they boost your scores so that's how I got my 999 whereas if you look at my credit karma score it is actually 653 out of 710 so I'm still trying to improve that and get into like the 700s so now getting on to the different elements they are categorized by a high impact medium impact and low impact I want to start off with the easiest thing you can do to improve your credit score and that is just to register on the Electoral roll this takes literally a minute you just go onto the governor website make sure your signed up and you probably should be but I know that some people don't vote so they don't sign up but even if you don't vote just make sure you're signed up to the poll so that you know it's proof of address and it really does have an impact on your credit score so this is one of the quickest ways to improve your credit score I'll leave a link below to the government website so you can actually go and check it out and the Electoral role is actually a medium impact one so although it isn't high impact it is something that you can do really quickly and it will improve your credit score the next thing to look at is credit utilization and that just means how much of your credit limit you are using so basically how much you're borrowing make sure you always keep your credit utilization below 25 and if you ever do go over 25 just make sure you pay some of it back so that you bring it back to that 25 and Below level it is so important this is one of the high impact factors and for those of you that have a low credit limit so even if it's a thousand pounds it is still important for you to try and keep your credit within 250 pounds because again the percentage is what they look at a lower credit utilization percentage is seen as a really good thing and it will improve your credit score so if you want to try and improve your credit score make sure you pay stuff back and reduce your credit utilization another high impact element is your payment history you need to make sure you do not miss any payments if you miss a payment it is Peak you're gonna struggle because it will go on your record and it will be there for a very long time for all the credit cards that I have I always have a direct debit and I set it so that it takes the minimum payment each month and on top of that I just make manual payments just to boost it and you know kind of show them that I can pay it back quicker you don't need to do that if you don't want to but it is actually really good to also do boosted payments it's kind of like a two-in-one make sure you don't miss any payments and do boosted payments if they see that you're always making payments and they don't see you as a risky kind of borrower they are more likely to increase your credit limit and this is actually my next put in another high impact thing is is your credit limit always try and increase your credit limit the credit limit is basically the total amount of credit that you're available to borrow so let's say you had five credit cards and you can borrow 5 000 on each then your credit limit is 25 000 pounds and if that was the case that's amazing because I think normally they say try and get your credit limit to about fifteen thousand pounds that way they can see that you know you've got access to a lot of credit but the fact that you're using probably less than 25 it just kind of shows them that wow like you have a good credit score they have access to credit and they don't need it so you're not a risky kind of borrower there's two different ways of increasing your credit limit the way I found which is a lot easier is just requesting a higher credit limit with the credit cards that you have right now so for example on my Santander credit card I went on to the app and there's a section where it says manage credit limit I think and you can manually request a credit increase and I just click that and they automatically just increase my credit limit it was so easy I didn't need to talk to anyone if you can't do it on the app then maybe we call them just ask them if your credit limit does get increased please do not go into it and use more than 25 because again that percentage is so important so it's just nice to have the extra credit but not use it basically it's like a way to increase your credit limit is to open new accounts but you need to be very careful when it comes to this because if you apply for a new account they do do a hard search which comes up on your record and that kind of reduces your credit score every time there's a hard search on your credit file it reduces your score so you don't want to just you know be applying for like five six new accounts I've only opened I think maybe one credit card a year if that and so try and like space it out because in the short term it will reduce your credit score when you open new accounts so it's a lot better to kind of spread out the opening of new accounts just so that you know your credit score is still good make sure when you apply for new credit cards you don't just apply for any credit card you don't just go on Barclays and just apply for like their credit card you need to see see what you're actually eligible for because I remember when I was at Uni I was not eligible for anything really I think my first credit card was Aqua oh no it was capture one they were the only ones that were willing to lend me money and I think my first card the credit limit was like 500 something very low and but over time I increased my credit limit by you know showing them that I can pay it back the way to figure out if you're actually eligible for different credit cards is to use search engines there's so many different sites that you know you just enter your details your financial situation whether you're employed whether you're a student make sure you fill it out honestly and they will match you to credit cards that they think you'd be eligible for so they usually have a percentage and so I think when I applied for my Capital One it said that I think 90 I was likely to get approved and I did get approved thankfully another thing that can improve your credit score is how long you've had an account for for example on my file it says that I've had my Barclays bank account open for nine years which is crazy but I'm really grateful because I think when I was 16 my dad opened a Barclays account for me and because he did that I now have nine years worth of you know credit history because I use that account so even if you opened your account I'd know at 18 and now you're like 24 that's still good because you've got six years of credit history and yeah just make sure you don't close those old accounts even if you're not using it keep it open because the oldest account you have is probably the best in terms of it affecting positively on your credit score so that Barclays account I do not use that as my current account anymore I've switched to Santander but I still have that open just because you know it was my first account and sometimes I use it just for like Savings in another way to improve your credit score is to have a mortgage and I know that this isn't something you can just easily apply for or you know just get but yeah I think some people think that having a mortgage is bad it's like a big expense yes it is but it's also a really good measure for these credit reference agencies because they can see that you know you're making your monthly mortgage payments that you're a very reliable borrower trustworthy borrowers and for those of you that don't have a mortgage but instead you might be renting there is a Rental Exchange scheme so make sure you Google that and kind of sign up for it by signing up to that scheme you're taking into account your monthly rent payment so when they look at your credit score that will be a factor that they consider and if you make your monthly rent payments then again that just shows that you're a good borrower and they are more likely to borrow to you and increase your credit score I don't think all landlords provide this service so you do need to check with your landlord and check out the website another thing you should do is download your credit report and just check that everything seems correct so make sure that there aren't any missed payments on your record for example if it says there's a missed payment but you don't remember there being a missed payment you can query that and you know resolve it just make sure that everything on your file looks correct even things like your address is that correct your date of birth your name things like that do matter so just make sure everything is correct and the final one is to not have joint bank accounts especially when the person you have a joint bank account with has a lower credit score for example let's say you've rented out a uni house with your friends and you've made a joint bank account to pay for the bills that could have a really bad impact on your credit score if your friends have a bad credit score I think it's a lot easier to just manually send each other money work it out or use split wise that's a really good app actually and you can split the bills and it just makes things easier but I would not recommend having a joint bank account I think it's a lot better just to keep your credit score independent not linked to anyone else it just gives you the freedom and just knowing that you know you're not being affected by anyone else is really good thing so those were some of the ways that you can improve your credit score and things to look out for if you guys have any questions please leave them down below and I will answer them thank you for watching guys bye [Music]

Channel: Ela

Views: 12,218

Keywords: how, to, improve, increase, your, credit, score, uk, credit score, credit score uk, perfect, streetorvintage

Id: cXE-dByz2bE

Length: 9min 50sec (590 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 13 2022