Debt

Doodledog

Yes, my credit score has declined since we paid off the mortgage and have no debt, other than in the early days of phone contracts when you are still paying off the phone. It hasn't bothered me, as I can't see us wanting a loan.

I always think that having a credit card and using it is on a par with always having a current passport and/or a current driving license (whether you still drive or not). There are many formal and other occasions where they are the only acceptable proof of identity.

I can remember when I looked after an elederly relative in care. As usual there had been a catastrophe and everything had happened uickly, I had real problems sorting his affairs out because he had stopped driving some years before, so no longer had a valid driving license, neither did he have a valid passport and no current utility bills.

Yes, my credit score has declined since we paid off the mortgage and have no debt, other than in the early days of phone contracts when you are still paying off the phone. It hasn't bothered me, as I can't see us wanting a loan.

butterandjam

fancythat

^Maybe I should get one to boost my credit rating, but we don't use credit, so it feels a bit pointless.6

I think I am right in saying[may not be] that with a couple, both need good credit ratings[and hence a credit history] to get the better deals on say if you want to change energy companies?

A credit rating is based on credit history, and a good credit history is not dependent on owning a credit card .

A good credit history is based on "stability" that's visible to financial investigation. Stuff like being on the electoral register, (shows your address) owning a bank account, (bank has checked your ID) and paying bills regularly and on time ( CTax, utilities, rent, student loan ) No history of court judgements for rent arrears, unpaid bills and debts etc.

Utilities have no means to take back the power or gas a customer has used but not paid for. So customers with a poor financial history of unpaid bills, rental evictions etc will often be required to pay for power /gas in advance of using it. (Deposit, or prepayment meter).

Very reliable no-hassle on-time payers are the customers utility companies compete for. We attract the lowest risk therefore cheapest utility contracts.

Nothing to do with owning a credit card or paying bills by credit card.

I disagree.

Credit card history is used extensively, easily checked. We're well past the times banks had to call all round to verify ones financials.

Despite what you say butterandjam, young people just starting in life do not have all the markers for virtue you have, nor are they in a postiion where they can live a life where debt never features.

Going to university or renting their first flat landlords and utility suppliers will want evidence that if they sign them up they will pay their fuel bills and their rent on time and regulalrly, so they will look to see if they have a credit card and how it has been used.

A credit rating is based on credit history, and a good credit history is not dependent on owning a credit card .

I think it is part of it.
I agree to differ.

fancythat

^Maybe I should get one to boost my credit rating, but we don't use credit, so it feels a bit pointless.6

I think I am right in saying[may not be] that with a couple, both need good credit ratings[and hence a credit history] to get the better deals on say if you want to change energy companies?

A credit rating is based on credit history, and a good credit history is not dependent on owning a credit card .

A good credit history is based on "stability" that's visible to financial investigation. Stuff like being on the electoral register, (shows your address) owning a bank account, (bank has checked your ID) and paying bills regularly and on time ( CTax, utilities, rent, student loan ) No history of court judgements for rent arrears, unpaid bills and debts etc.

Utilities have no means to take back the power or gas a customer has used but not paid for. So customers with a poor financial history of unpaid bills, rental evictions etc will often be required to pay for power /gas in advance of using it. (Deposit, or prepayment meter).

Very reliable no-hassle on-time payers are the customers utility companies compete for. We attract the lowest risk therefore cheapest utility contracts.

Nothing to do with owning a credit card or paying bills by credit card.

David49

It hasnt changed, lenders often want a guarantor they just dont say "male" anymore, even years ago if a woman had assets in her own right she would be accepted
Today most often if a personal guarantor is needed both parents would need to sign the guarantor agreement.

I remember that one. My starter house finally turned 10 years late - in 1984. Someone I thought was a friend (duh!) at that time knew that, due to the circumstances, I'd put down a rather large percentage deposit on that house and had thousands of £s tied up in it from Day 1 as "my equity". It didn't take her long to follow a pattern she'd established since I bought that house of popping in unexpectedly at around dinner time - cue for me making some for her too and being rather distracted all round. So she put a piece of closely-typed A4 paper down in front of me whilst I was duly distracted and said "Could you sign this - it's just 'to say you know me' " and was because she wanted a loan to buy a second house. Being distracted and thinking she was a friend at that point I had 10 seconds of believing her lie (in which time I did sign) - but then up came that little intuitive voice in head going "She's trying to con you into being a guarantor - that's what she wants and she isn't even admitting it to you".!!!! She is lying when she says it's 'just to say you know her' ".

Cue for me scrawling straight through it at once.....shocked.

She'd only wanted to take advantage of MY money....!!!! and would have conned me without that. I've read so many tales of people who signed to be a guarantor getting conned by the other person - albeit it was usually parents that copped it for that.

There is nothing wrong in wanting guarentors, where an income was insecure but secure back-up is possible. DD went to university in London at the bottom of the early 1990s property crash. It was cheaper to buy a property than rent one. Her only income was her maintance grant, which mainly came from us. One or both of us, I cannot remember which, guarenteed her loan. I think we stood guarentor for about 5 years, until she had graduated and was in her first 'permanent' job.

It hasnt changed, lenders often want a guarantor they just dont say "male" anymore, even years ago if a woman had assets in her own right she would be accepted
Today most often if a personal guarantor is needed both parents would need to sign the guarantor agreement.

Wonder how long that went on for - ie demanding a guarantor for a woman...but not a man. I feel like I must have started in on "Life Proper" so to say at 24 (and that was the 1970s). I don't recall any of that malarkey going on - so don't know whether it had all been thrown out by the mid-1970s or, at the least, they didnt dare try that sort of stuff on any longer in modern university cities - but might have done so somewhere more old-fashioned/remote??

I do remember my work being particularly low-paid in that era - and reckon that was down to sex discrimination and I certainly know there were employers (even government ones!) that were finding ways to indirectly discriminate against women up into this century even. But I don't recall any discrimination - other than at work - from around the 1970s onwards (apart from those couple of bits that are still there in Society as a whole that I'm aware of - but thankfully the discrimination has basically stopped on an everyday basis).

Yes MOnica I concur with the sentiment and if I'd had the luxury of time would probably have trailed around to see if I could've found a retail outlet that didn't demand this. But I'd just rented an unfurnished flat in a prestigious location and had not one stick of furniture. Most of it I bought second-hand but items - like a bed - I wanted brand new (and the one I chose was reasonably priced), so I was a traitor to feminism or, as it was then referred to, Women's Liberation. Mea Culpa, eh!

Back in the (late) 1960s if a shop asked me for a male guarantor for anything, I would pick up my bag and walk out. I did this a number of times, but I always found a shop that did not demand one sooner or later.

I vaguely remember a time when companies needing to do a credit-check on your ability to 'pay-up' for a possible loan/HP, etc, would contact your bank and ask them, in effect, if you were 'good' for the £sum involved! They, the bank, didn't give any details of your financial transactions to said company, but - presumably - would offer a view based on your account activity.

... now you can check for free your own credit worthiness tho' of course someone saw a gap in the market for those who want a more comprehensive report, where you can see a breakdown of the factors affecting your score.

I do remember taking out an HP loan for furniture for my newly-acquired rented flat in the late 60s and having to wait for the bank to confirm my worthiness - and for me to find a male guarantor for it...

Possibly. We do both have a good credit history, but haven't had credit cards for a few years, so that might count as ancient history now and not be relevant. Maybe we should get them. We never have problems with things like phone contracts, which are about the only things that show as searches against our name.

^Maybe I should get one to boost my credit rating, but we don't use credit, so it feels a bit pointless.6

I think I am right in saying[may not be] that with a couple, both need good credit ratings[and hence a credit history] to get the better deals on say if you want to change energy companies?

I don't currently have a credit card. As we are both retired, I can't see the point. We buy outright, and get financial protection from things such as PayPal and Apple Pay, which I use for online purchases (most of what I buy and book).

Maybe I should get one to boost my credit rating, but we don't use credit, so it feels a bit pointless.

I think what a lot of people forget about credit cards is that if you use them to make up a shortfall in your income, you are always playing catchup, as the following month you start with less than usual (as the payment has gone out). It can't be helped if the card has been used for essentials, but if money has been spent on luxury items one month, there is less in the next, and then there's the interest charges.

A friend's daughter has asked to move back home as she wants to clear her debts. She has run up about £30k on holidays, clothes and so on. At first my friend was ok about the idea as she wants to help, but her daughter's plan is to pay off the cards by having no housing costs or bills to pay, ie not contributing a penny to her mother's outgoings. I'm not sure what I would do in the circumstances - on one hand I'd want to help my daughter, but on the other I don't see that having free holidays and luxury items then living free to pay it off is a good lesson for life. The daughter is in her 30s and has a good job - it's not as though she's a struggling student.

M0nica

I get points when I use my John Lewis credit card. I had vouchers to the value of £90 by Christmas. I always do part of each weeks shop in Waitrose and the vouchers more or less paid for the Christmas week shop in that shop.

Credit cards are also useful when you buy something expensive - a sofa or domestic appliance and you can spread the expenditure informaly over 2 or 3 months.

We accrue air miles using credit cards. Quite useful.

I get points when I use my John Lewis credit card. I had vouchers to the value of £90 by Christmas. I always do part of each weeks shop in Waitrose and the vouchers more or less paid for the Christmas week shop in that shop.

Credit cards are also useful when you buy something expensive - a sofa or domestic appliance and you can spread the expenditure informaly over 2 or 3 months.

Paperbackwriter

Why have a credit card if you pay it all off every month? Air miles!

Plus we use our to pay for our rail card and meals out with the points we build up.
We would never use it for things we can’t afford to pay off at the end of the month and it does come in so useful when traveling.
We got stuck in Perth when flights were cancelled because of Covid. We had to pay for more tickets to get us back via Doha, about the only airport that was allowing stopovers.
There would have been a way to get back I’m sure but a credit card made it easy.

I think part of the problem (at least around my area) is that builders would rather build a few large houses that they can make a lot of money from than a few more smaller houses

They've built lots of smaller houses on tiny plots here and they're not selling either.
Sales of larger houses on new estates are stagnating too.

There seems to be a slump in house sales which makes one wonder what will happen with the Government drive to build 1.5 million homes in the current Parliament if those already built are not selling.

No point in getting annoyed about it, or blaming other people.
Quite.

We had to move, I really did not want to but life doesn't always work out the way you want it to. It was just how it was.

Everybody has different circumstances and everybody makes their own choices.

I think part of the problem (at least around my area) is that builders would rather build a few large houses that they can make a lot of money from than a few more smaller houses. There is a building plot a mile or so from us that could have been used for six of seven smaller houses but instead they built three large ranch-style houses with large gardens and sod them for well over a million each.

Even when flats are renovated they are 'luxury, all-mod-cons' flats that cost the earth rather than nice, modern reasonably sized flats that ordinary people can afford.

When we bought our first flat in the 70s we had to use both our salaries to get the mortgage and I lived in fear for the first two years that one of us would lose our job and we would lose the flat (I worked on contract, so it was possible). The flat was the last one on a small site and had been reduced so we jumped at the chance as we had no other options. We lived without furniture until we could afford a bed but did have a built in kitchen.

We weren't 'fortunate' though some are indeed fortunate. No legacy here.

Retrospectively, I believe we had timing on our side when purchasing our little home. We didn't have good timing when I lost 4 babies between the first two and the last two. God's plan, we have wonderful daughters.

No, of course not. Although contraception is more reliable than it used to be, the idea that having children is a choice (with or without contraception) is problematic, IMO.

We had mortgages on houses bought in boom times when interest rates were very high, and were only able to save when they were very low. It may have been timing, but it was not of our 'choosing' - we bought the first one when we married, the second when we wanted to start a family, and the third when we needed more space (we are still there). Life might have been easier had we bought earlier or later, planned things differently, whatever, but we didn't 🤷. I don't feel angry at others about that. I don't feel aggrieved that none of it was our 'fault', or that we did nothing 'wrong'. Lots of things have gone right, and we were never entitled to anything in the first place. No point in getting annoyed about it, or blaming other people.

Last comment to Doodedog btw.