How important is good credit? It is VITAL.
Like most people, myself and Steve have made some bad financial decisions in the past. I try not to regret things but one of my biggest regrets is not saving more money. Sure I had fun when I was 18/19, working two jobs and barely having time to myself (which, when I did, was spent with friends at the pub spending my wages!) but if I had saved even a fraction of it I would have been set up for quite a while.
When we moved into our first rented accommodation I had perfect credit and Steve’s, well Steve’s was rubbish. Moving out isn’t that easy though and I soon found my credit score decreasing as I got used to this whole new way of life – I had many more bills coming out than I had before and it took a while to adjust to ensuring everything was paid for on time. With Steve’s credit being poor, I ended up taking out phone contracts for me and him and we worked on getting him a good credit score too. We finally achieved it but as you all know, we suffered some financial problems which started back at the tail end of 2013 with me losing my job. I did take voluntary redundancy but I pretty much had no choice – they wanted me to spend £5 on travel four times a week to earn about £25 a day… they wanted me to do silly shifts and by the time I had paid for travel, I would have had barely anything left for bills. I had started to earn a little money from my blog and freelance work so decided to jump ship full time. We had a small amount in savings to tide me over bills wise whilst I got the word out that I was going to be working from home full time.
Unfortunately Steve’s job was quite far away so he spent a lot in fuel travelling and we were struggling to make ends meet …when the car gave up the ghost. We borrowed Steve’s mums car for quite some time! In order to build up our credit scores, we both got credit rebuilder credit cards which were originally going to just be used for Steve’s petrol money and the food shop each month then paid off on payday – life gets in the way and we soon saw the balances creeping up. Why am I telling you this? Because people don’t talk about money enough. We are working hard to ensure we get back to having good credit as it is so important for so many aspects of life. I’m currently looking for a part time job that I can do alongside my freelance work and Jack being at nursery – this will obviously be so much easier when Jack is at school full time in September. I have applied for a local job though to save on travel costs. I also have my little side hustles too – as well as blog and freelance income, I do online surveys and stuff like that – more income means more being paid back = getting back to a good credit score.
Stoneacre have created this fabulous infographic to talk more about why good credit is so important:
I am making so much more of an effort to be more responsible with my money now. I am almost 26 years old with a child, I need to get my act in gear. Steve is almost 29 and if we ever want to own a house, we need to get that good credit back. Hindsight is a wonderful thing but I do wish I had saved more money and perhaps utilised my good credit back then when I could.
Are you making any steps to improve your credit score?
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