What's up you guys, sasha here now, since i started this channel just a few months ago, i keep getting asked the same question over and over again and comments to every single video, even videos that are nothing to do with credit cards. So i thought i'd go and address it, and i put out a video specifically about this. What to some people may seem like a really simple issue, but a lot of people just aren't aware of the specific details. It is.

How do you exactly use a credit card to improve your credit profile or your credit history or your likelihood of being able to qualify for credit products in the future? How do you build your credit using a credit card, a lot of people kind of say well, should i should i spend a lot on it? Should i not spend, should i clear the balance straight away? Should i wait? How much should i spend like what should i do with it? Should i have multiple i'm going to cover all of these i'm going to walk through it, one step at a time. Just a super quick disclaimer. I am not a financial advisor. I am unable to provide financial advice because i don't know anyone's personal circumstances and i'm not actually regulated to do so.

If you do want financial advice specifically for you, you can go and find a suitably qualified professional and seek that somewhere else. This is just an educational channel. Having said that, the other thing that i wanted to mention is none of this is sponsored by any of the credit cards. I'm going to be talking about they're, not paying me to talk about this, because the sponsor for today's video is no.

I don't actually have a sponsor. But if somebody out there would like to sponsor a video so that i actually can earn a little bit of revenue from making these videos please go ahead and get in touch. I would love to talk to you anyway. Let's dive right into the video step number one, the super super simple one that is get your credit card, but how exactly do you get it? Where do you go to go and get your very first credit card? The best thing to do if you're, just first starting out, is to go and use the various different comparison, websites that are available to go and check your eligibility, all the big ones out there.

So places like money, supermarket money, saving expo which is actually part of money supermarket, but works in a slightly different way, places like totally money and there's lots of other ones. I'm not going to go through them. Those are probably the biggest ones that i would initially go to. This could compare compared to market blah.

Blah blah anyway go and try some of these different websites, and it's actually better to try more than one most of them will work on a soft check basis. In fact, all the big ones work on the soft check basis. So what this means is when you go and input your details and you go and look at which credit card products you might be eligible for that particular search will not be officially recorded as a full search on your bureau and, as a result, it won't impact. Your eligibility in the past, and maybe, if you saw or read some information that is a bit outdated, this would have been the case and searching and applying for credit cards would have been a bad thing today.

It doesn't really matter you can go and check your eligibility on all these different platforms and then check which credit cards you are eligible for. If you're new to credit cards, the likelihood is you'll only qualify for tier one and tier two credit cards. If you want a full breakdown of what these different tiers are and exactly how you can move up between these different tiers and what kind of cars you can get, i'm gon na put a video, i'm gon na link in the description below i'm gon. Na put it up here as well, for those watching make sure you watch the rest of this video first then go and check that one out anyway, the likelihood is you only qualify for credit cards that are probably not to be that great you're, probably not going To qualify for the best ones, if you're researching this and you're trying to build your credit and you're right to the beginning of your journey likelihood, is you're either going to get a credit builder credit card or a regular sort of everyday credit card from your bank Or something of that type, if you're interested in specific stuff about the first credit cards that you can get as a beginner to the world of credit cards, my very first video that i ever released is about that topic.

I'm gon na also link that in the description below and if you're watching this in a few months time, i will probably have made an update. So i will replace that link with the updated video when that comes out anyway. The reason you should go to comparison websites is because there you can go and check your eligibility for multiple different products with just one search and one application. It is true that a lot of providers also do soft checks on their own websites, but it just saves you a huge amount of time and also it is really important to remember that on comparison websites, you can often get much better deals and much lower rates Than you can get directly with a provider now, if you're building your credit, that rate shouldn't really matter, it shouldn't really matter, because you shouldn't borrow money and actually pay interest for it.

But if you ever came to the situation where just something happened and you had to go and use that credit card to borrow money, if you go through a comparison website, the credit card is available on, say the new day website or the vancous website or somewhere Else at let's say a 34.9 or a 35.9 apr may be available at 29.9 or even 28.9 and 27.97. The exact same credit card with exactly the same eligibility criteria may be available on the comparison website at a much lower rate. So if you have to go and get it from somewhere, you might as well go through that channel because there's no other difference there. Now, after banging all your details into these various different comparison websites, you may find that you don't qualify for absolutely anything.

They tell you that no credit card provider will say yes to you and the likelihood is. There are two possible reasons now, there's a third which is you got some of your details wrong, like you mistyped your address, this is actually more common than you think, make sure you go and check exactly what you have typed. Sometimes people go and type in lower ground floor flat when actually their officially registered address is flat a or something else like that. And then what will happen is none of the credit card providers can actually match you to your credit profile, because those two aren't the same and as a result, everyone will decline you, but assuming that you've typed everything correctly, there are two possible reasons why you may Not qualify for any and if you fall into one of these reasons, you need to go and address it.

You need to address them so that you can then go and improve and build your credit reason number one. You are new to credit. The likelihood is you're. Probably quite young or you've just never in your life used any form of credit.

You've never had mobile phone contracts, current accounts with overdrafts or loans or anything else. Maybe you had one. Maybe you had like a phone contract but that phone contract doesn't report to the bureau that the credit card companies use there could be a myriad of reasons, but just you haven't used much credit or none at all, and in this situation you need to go and Start somewhere so the ways to go and build your credit if you're in that position, so that you can then qualify for some credit cards is first go and make sure you're in the electoral roll. Now that's one really important criteria that people use go and register.

Whether or not you care about voting and politics make sure you go and get on that next go and try to get a mobile phone contract. It doesn't matter if it's the best one out there. It doesn't matter if you prefer pay-as-you-go for whatever reason. A mobile phone contract is becoming increasingly important in credit reports and it is being reported more and more, and people are using that data more and more so i'll go and get a mobile phone contract so that data begins feeding through next.

Make sure that if you have a current account, if you are eligible for an overdraft you go and take that overdraft facility go and check with your bank, don't ask them, can i get an overdraft, you know like do you need to apply if you can get An overdraft, but you can't get a credit card, then that overdraft data will begin reporting to the credit reference agencies, and that will help you build credit before you are able to qualify for credit cards. Last. Make sure the point that i just made make sure you go and check with your own bank. Sometimes your own bank will give you a credit card, even though nobody else will, because they have so much more data about you that they can use.

Sometimes that bank will say no via comparison website, but if you go directly to them, they can go and match the data from your current account from all the other stuff that you've done with the bank in the past and that may give them the confidence to Give you a credit card where other people won't, because they just don't have access to all of that data. The second reason why you might not qualify for any credit cards is, if you have bad credit and bad credit means that you might have had some kind of trouble either very recently or maybe some point in the past. Maybe you charged off on your debt, so you stopped paying it and it went into default state. Maybe you had an iva so involuntary arrangement to repay your debts.

Maybe you had a county court judgment against you for some debts that you haven't repaid. There's a lot of different reasons. Maybe you were declared bankrupt in all of these reasons. Um.

You generally have to exercise patience. So if it's something like that, a lot of credit card providers just won't allow you to get any credit card for at least an 18 month period. Some will allow you to qualify after 12 months, but in a lot of cases, you're, probably having to wait somewhere between the 12 and 18 months before you're eligible to qualify for anything, and it's not going to be from the date. So, typically, there's a delay with reporting of all the all of this data.

So what this means is, you may have to wait as long as say, 20 months from whenever this thing happened before you're able to qualify for a credit card. Now that doesn't apply. If you have recently missed a load of payments, if you weren't several payments behind or you've had any other trouble like that, like you frequently go over your limit, there's a bunch of other negative markers on your profile. Those are also potential reasons why you are being declined.

Number one thing to do is to stop doing those things so make at least the minimum payment on any other credit commitments that you have make sure that if you have a loan that you're meeting the monthly repayments. If you have any other credit that you're meeting the contractually obliged repayments on them, if you have a revolving facility, so like another credit card or some kind of store card, make sure that you're repaying the debt and you're not going above the limit set by that Facility so make sure that everything is in order and everything is being paid on time then do whatever you can to bring those balances down. So if you have a mountain of outstanding debt every month, try to take a small cut into it, try to go and pay just a little bit extra so that debt comes down. All of these will really help if the same thing applies.

If you are in that original position, where, if you've had major debt issues in the past, make sure that the stuff you're doing today is good, make sure that all your payments are on time, make sure you never go over your limits. Make sure that whenever you are repaying that that it is done by direct debit, so that you don't miss a date so that there isn't a situation where you've paid a day too late, and it didn't clear in time do all these things and eventually you will Come to a position where you'll be able to qualify for credit cards step number two is to go and begin actually spending on that credit card. So when that credit card arrives you're going to open it, you go and authorize it or whatever you have to do, and then you can go and begin spending now. This is a step that a lot of people actually misunderstand, because they either watch videos that are about the us, where the way this works is completely different and doesn't apply to the way the uk credit agencies work, what they just watch, really bad advice.

I see a ton of advice out there that says: oh hey, just put one thing: put a five pound spend on that credit card a month and that's what you need to do, or some people say well, you need to show that you really use the card. So make sure you go and spend the full amount or whatever some people say. Oh, you need to spend 30 because 30 of your credit limit is the golden number, because that's what it is sort of, not quite but sawed off in the u.s, because in the u.s there's a centralized fico score that all credit providers use in their decisioning and That fico score likes utilizations of 30. It doesn't apply to the uk.

So in uk it is a little bit more flexible because every credit provider will have their own rules, but the general rule of thumb is this: if you go and fully max your credit card. So if your credit limit is 500 pounds or 250 pounds on that very first credit card that you have and you go and spend pretty much the full amount, so you go up to 490 pounds on that 500 pound limit. That will look like you are potentially stressed in financial sense. It would look like.

Maybe you are, you know really needing to borrow money. It will look like. Maybe you need more credit and the credit that you're using you are already maxing out and you're not able to go and pay for basic necessities with money from elsewhere. So you don't want to show credit card companies that you are in that potential position, even if you're, not even if you are not in that position, you don't want to go and max your credit cards, because it indicates that you're, potentially in a credit stress situation.

You also don't want to go and get a credit card and then not use it at all or use it. A tiny, tiny amount, because it will show potentially that you don't really understand how credit cards work. You don't really use them and therefore your knowledge of how they work is not actually good enough to be able to qualify for better products in the future and build your credit that way. So if you go and get a credit card that just lies in the droid, don't use it that's actually worse in some cases than not having a credit card at all.

If you go and just put a fiver every now and then on it again, it's probably not gon na actually help you very much because it doesn't show that you understand how it works, that you put regular spending on it and you've repaid balances every single month. It's it's it's just on the low side. So for most lenders you probably just want to put some reasonable amount of spend on it so long as it doesn't go too close to the top boundary just put regular shopping. So when you go to the supermarket, you buy food or when you buy any other regular things you pay for regular bills.

If you can pay for those bills using your credit card, go ahead and do it because all of these are just regular everyday, don't go and buy stuff that you wouldn't otherwise buy. Just because you now have this credit card, because that can actually go and get you into debt if you're not able to actually afford that thing, then you build the balance and you don't repay it in full. We're going to come to that in just a second but go and put just your regular everyday spend if you go and fill up your car go and put that on your credit card instead of paying for it with your debit card. Those types of thing really really important do not go and immediately repay your credit.

Some people think that that is the way to do it. Like i spent this morning and this evening i logged on, and i made a faster payments and i've repaid that in full. So that's really good everyone's going to think that i'm a very credit worthy person because i repay so quickly. It's actually a bad thing because in the data set that every credit card company provides the bureaus there's a huge number of variables.

There are several hundred variables about a thousand on average and a lot of these variables for every month. Are things like what is your balance at the end of the month and at the end of the month, is not the end of the calendar month? It is an arbitrary date which is different for every credit card provider. You won't know what it is, but you want to make sure that there is some balance showing on there, because that's how they know that you are actually using the credit card. There's another variable, which is the balance on your statement date.

So if you don't have a balance on your statement date again, that's not good, because some people will be using that balance in their credit, decisioning, there's other variables as well that are linked, like average balance. Throughout the month, so if you go and spend and clear the balance within the same day, the closing balance on that day may show a zero. So it will look like you haven't actually spent on a credit card at all. So that's not a good thing, because you want to show that you are responsibly able to borrow money.

So what you want to do is to go and spend it, but not clear it in full. What you want to do is to go and pay it in full after your statement is generated, which is my point number three, so step number three is go and make that repayment. There are two key things here: number one you want to go and repay the balance in full. This kind of goes back to the stuff.

I was mentioning earlier. Don't spend money that you can't actually afford make sure the stuff you're spending you actually have money in your current account to pay for so then you can go and repay the credit card in full. If you don't repay the credit card in full you're, actually doing your credit building a disservice, people will look at you and say: oh no, he now has debt. You know has debt that he can't afford, because he actually carries a balance and he pays interest and you are actually going to spend money on interest that you won't be able to repay debt with and that can build into a whole mountain.

You don't want to go there if you're wanting to build credit and that's the reason why you're doing this, you want to go and put the balance on your credit card and then repay it in full after the statement is generated. Now some people like managing everything manually because that's how they work, but the difficulty here is this: you don't want to repay too early. So you don't want to wait for the statement to generate and immediately clear it that day, because the thing i was mentioning earlier, sometimes the end of the month could be say two days or three days after that statement they just generated and then some of the Numbers in your bureau will look like you had a zero balance that month. If somebody uses that field instead of the statement balance field, and you want to make sure that you give all the various different fields, the maximum amount of time possible to populate with data.

From that month, so it's better to pay somewhat later in the cycle. So typically, when you statement is generated, you'll have a period of say 20 to 25 days. It depends on the credit card provider and the specific scheme that they use in the version of that scheme, but anyway, typically it's about 20-25 days after the statement is generated. The payment has to be made, so it's better to make it later, but it is super super important not to make it too late.

If you're making these payments manually, it can take several days for that payment to actually clear and it's the clearing date that matters not the date on which you made the payment. So if you make it like one day before on the day when the payment due date is, you may find that you've actually missed the payment for that month and that's going to be really bad. That will a record is a mispayment on the credit file, which is really bad. You'll incur a 12 pound missed payment fee.

Your credit card provider may have issues with you and begin blocking your card. Sending you angry letters and calling you you don't want any of that. The best thing by far to do here is to set up a direct debit for the full payment. The direct debit will come out right at the end on the last possible day.

It will take the full amount that is due automatically. You won't have to worry about whether you know it's going to go out whether it's going to reach there in time. You just need to make sure that your current account has enough money for that dirty debate. To come out, if it doesn't, what may happen is your payment will bounce and then the same thing will happen.

The direct debit payment bounces, the car provider says no payment was made and therefore you get the 12-pound late payment fee and so on and so on and so on. You don't want to happen. Make sure that your current account has sufficient balance for that payment to go out so that you never fall into that trap. The last step step number four - is probably the simplest in terms of explanation, but the hardest to achieve, and that is you just need to go and do the three steps that i just mentioned every single month for a period of time now, typically it'll.

Take you 12 to 18 months to build sufficient credit to go and be able to qualify for better products, because that's sort of time frames on which lots of these metrics that the credit card companies look at are being calculated. They'll. Look at your average balance trend over the last 12 to 18 months, and you know whether you've made all your payments in that period and so on and so on. So that's how long you may have to wait, but the key is: every single month go and use your credit card for some regular purchases so that you build up some kind of balance.

Make sure. Then you wait for the statement to generate. Then you will go and repay that full amount of money in in full uh to make sure you don't carry any interest and for it to actually help you build your credit and then just keep repeating that time after time, time after time ignore all the stuff That you see, in terms of the credit scores that experian, equifax and transunion show you. Those credit scores are relatively meaningless in many many cases.

If you get a credit card and then you begin spending on that credit card, those scores will actually drop and that's because those scores are not real scores that the credit card companies actually use to decide whether you're eligible or not. They just use some really high level basic stuff, they'll say: oh, you now have a credit card and before you didn't have a credit card, therefore, maybe you're higher risk, but remember these scores are just the transunion experian or equifax agencies just trying to roughly indicate what The lenders may decide - and it's you know it's the same for mortgage lenders and credit cards. Nobody actually uses these scores. These scores don't even go in many cases to the lenders, so nobody actually cares about that.

Regular good use of your credit card is a good thing in the eyes of lenders over the long term, if you're clearing it in full, if you're making the most of the perks as you qualify for better credit cards, you'll then have things like you know: cash Back in some cases or loyalty points in any case, every credit card gives you section: 75 protection on purchases. So if you buy something - and you then have an issue on it and it's more than 100 pounds, but under 30 000 pounds of value, then you get protection on that. So the credit card company is jointly liable. So let's say you go and purchase a new kitchen and the company that you purchased it from goes bankrupt before installing it.

You will actually be able to recover that money. You won't be able to do it if you don't use a credit card. There's a lot of other benefits like that go and look at some of my other videos. Where i talk about those, but anyway, it is a good way of building credit and it's probably the best way of building credit over time.

Get that credit card go and use it repair it and full repeat. I hope you guys found this useful if you have make sure you go and like this video. That is exactly what you need to do for youtube to understand that this video was useful, that you actually found it helpful and it that maybe you want other people to benefit from seeing it as well. If you're interested in more content about credit about financial services, products about making more money and making more of the money that you have go and subscribe to this channel, that is exactly what i talk about on this channel in every single video.

Make sure you hit that bell so get notifications every single time when i release a new video, i really really appreciate you watching if you managed to get this far. Thank you. So much and i'll see you guys later.