r/Glasgow Tools

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> I had seen ones which acted like a credit card, but were actally your own money, but you essentially just get less for your £1.

This comes back to my earlier point about not paying to improve your credit. Even if it's a small fee, that's still not worth it just to build credit history.

> The reason I thought of maybe doing that as in the meantime im not likely to get any sort of credit card (nor do I want one), just thinking of ways to make some positive movements on my credit score.

The credit builder cards are very deliberately low limits and high APRs, so I wouldn't write off your ability to get one just yet. MSE has eligibility checkers that will tell you what you can get. But if you can't get approved for one right now, I wouldn't go paying fees to get the prepaid ones. Once you've got this £2k of debt out from under you, you'll immediately start seeing improvements from that alone and it shouldn't be long before you can be approved for one. You're talking about a minimum of 3 years before you'll have savings to buy, so it's not something to go rushing into and pay fees to have. Get one when you can get one, but definitely don't stress. The mortgage lender is primarily looking for assurance that you won't stop paying them and not having any credit for a few years isn't a problem. People get mortgages without ever having had a credit card or anything all the time.

> I probably should have understoood that

Eh, nobody knows something until they learn it and now you know.

> I'd set myself a target of probably 3-5 years to save up to allow me the money for deposit, the potential upset of the additional charges like you mention can crop up and some scope for the other charges. Ideally i'd like to be going into this process with £20,000, which im basing on the expectation of my salary increasing over the next two years as well.

Sounds like a very reasonable plan to me.

> There's a lot in terms of rewiring my approach to money involved here as well, as I, and this is just being honest to myself, has historically been very poor so im trying to really change my entire view on money, budgeting etc.

I've been there, and I can tell you that it will click for you eventually and you'll be fine. I'd definitely recommend a way of budgeting called "zero-based budgeting". A traditional budget has you go "I think I'll get this much money in and I'll spend this much money". And then at the end of the month, you compare the budget with your actual spend and you go "aw fuck, I spent more, what a shame, better luck next month". Fine if you've got loads of wiggle room in your budget, less fine if you have specific goals. Zero-based budgeting is also known as "envelope" budgeting. You take the money you *actually* have and you divide it up into "envelopes". You put £X into your Rent envelope, £Y into your food envelope, £Z into your discretionary spending envelope, and so on until you run out of money. If you want to spend more than is in a particular envelope, you MUST take that money from another envelope. This type of budgeting slaps you in the face if you're impeding on your ability to pay your bills or save, because you have to take money from somewhere else. You could do it with actual envelopes, but you can also recreate it with any bank account that allows you to have pots (Monzo comes to mind but there's definitely others) or using specific budgeting software like /r/YNAB. I found that thinking about my money this way absolutely changed my approach to money. Suddenly debt pretty much wasn't an option anymore. It emphasises that *something has gotta give* if you're going to overspend and forces that to be a conscious choice. You need to go and take money away from your savings right now if you want to spend more than your budgeted fun money this month.

However you do it though, as long as you're totally honest with yourself throughout, you'll be fine. Definitely make sure you give yourself room to have fun money though. I've tried to go down to absolutely no discretionary spending whatsoever and it's grim once the novelty wears off. Even just £100 you can spend however you like is helpful.
Reddit Linkhttps://www.reddit.com/r/glasgow/comments/wrinbc/credit_union/ikx3xya/
CreatedFri 19th Aug 2022 11:15am
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