Credit

Over the last few years, my credit score has been a nightmare. Not for any good valid reason, really, except that I moved around a lot for several years, changed jobs a lot, went self-employed, that kind of thing. Nothing wrong with any of that, except in the eyes of banks, and their credit-scoring crap.

So I’ve made do with a current account (obtained by dint of a minor miracle, and no small amount of bullshit bureaucracy) and the bank debit card. Which is fine. Oh – and an overdraft, which wasn’t so fine. In and out of it on a regular basis, but never over the limit.

Anyway, every so often I apply for a credit card, and fully expect to be declined. My credit score stuff is roughly zero – half the time they couldn’t find me on the records, or on the electoral roll, or somewhere else, and the other half it was the standard crap about “You’re self-employed? We want six years of audited accounts before we’ll let you have anything”. But I’ve only been in business two years, and the accounts fall below the Companies House level for requiring audited accounts. “We don’t care, we want six years of audited accounts”.

And then people wonder why I hate banks.

So, a couple of weeks ago, in light of various other developments, and talking to the IFA in Norfolk, I applied again. And lo, knock me down with a wafted feather, I got it. Bloody hell – I must be getting back on the radar again, or something.

It arrived this week – with a credit limit of far more than I wanted/needed. So now I’ll use it for one or two items per month, then pay it off. I’ll probably use it for a couple of larger items too, and pay those off over two or three months – still building up that bloody credit rating, after all – but that’s it. It’s not even being carried in my wallet – instead it’s safe at home in a locked drawer.

The only reason I’ve got it at all is to build up the credit rating. That’s it. I don’t want to live life on credit – and before Herself complains, I admit, I don’t see the overdraft as “credit” per se, although I should do. I like being able to pay for what I want when I want, but only so long as it doesn’t destroy me for the rest of the month.

That’s the way I’ve lived for the last eight or ten years, and I really don’t intend to change things now.