r/Glasgow Tools

Title
Author	dddiamonddd
Comment	> Im in the process of trying to consolidate my debts into one. Genuinely, what's the point? You've said you have £700 disposable income each month. 3-4 months and you could have that completely gone. Consolidating that is a bit of a waste of time. Yeah, you'd save a bit of interest, but I'm willing to get it's not very much by nominal value. > I might even just pay £300 the first few months You have £700 disposable income. Why would you only pay £300? Have a few months where you don't splash as much cash and the debt is away. £300 means you'll be 7+ months to get rid of it. Consolidating it just to take longer to pay it off is wildly inefficient and, frankly, not indicative of good financial habits. The reason I know this is that I consolidated my own debt (more than 10 times your debt) many moons ago and didn't then properly dial in my habits to make sure I could get it all cleared off and the 0% offers I'd managed to get it on to expired with the balance not having changed very much. You don't need consolidation, you need the discipline to pay off as much as possible as soon as possible. > I also want to explore watys of improving my credit score. I'm going to just link to the /r/UKPersonalFinance subreddit's guide to credit ratings for you to read as that explains it better than I ever could: https://ukpersonal.finance/credit-ratings/ > I know i wont be accepted for a credit card etc due to horrific credit card spending early 20s to get through uni living Things like missed payments and other poor history will drop off after 6 years when the account in question is closed. Here is MoneySavingExpert's guide to credit builders: https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/credit-cards/bad-credit-credit-cards/ The local credit unions don't offer anything like this. They offer loans (which you likely won't get if your credit report is as poor as you say it is). Use the eligibility checker to see if you can get any of those credit cards, then only spend on the credit card what you would have otherwise spent and pay it in full and on time every single month.
Reddit Link	https://www.reddit.com/r/glasgow/comments/wrinbc/credit_union/ikwgbsu/
Created	Fri 19th Aug 2022 7:18am
Status	normal ()

> Im in the process of trying to consolidate my debts into one.

Genuinely, what's the point? You've said you have £700 disposable income each month. 3-4 months and you could have that completely gone. Consolidating that is a bit of a waste of time. Yeah, you'd save a bit of interest, but I'm willing to get it's not very much by nominal value.

> I might even just pay £300 the first few months

You have £700 disposable income. Why would you only pay £300? Have a few months where you don't splash as much cash and the debt is away. £300 means you'll be 7+ months to get rid of it. Consolidating it just to take longer to pay it off is wildly inefficient and, frankly, not indicative of good financial habits. The reason I know this is that I consolidated my own debt (more than 10 times your debt) many moons ago and didn't then properly dial in my habits to make sure I could get it all cleared off and the 0% offers I'd managed to get it on to expired with the balance not having changed very much. You don't need consolidation, you need the discipline to pay off as much as possible as soon as possible.

> I also want to explore watys of improving my credit score.

I'm going to just link to the /r/UKPersonalFinance subreddit's guide to credit ratings for you to read as that explains it better than I ever could: https://ukpersonal.finance/credit-ratings/

> I know i wont be accepted for a credit card etc due to horrific credit card spending early 20s to get through uni living

Things like missed payments and other poor history will drop off after 6 years when the account in question is closed.

Here is MoneySavingExpert's guide to credit builders:
https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/credit-cards/bad-credit-credit-cards/

The local credit unions don't offer anything like this. They offer loans (which you likely won't get if your credit report is as poor as you say it is).

Use the eligibility checker to see if you can get any of those credit cards, then *only spend on the credit card what you would have otherwise spent* and pay it in full and on time every single month.