To worry I’ve damaged my credit score

[Toesoncarpet]

Please be gentle with me as I’m panicking and searching for advice!

Long story short, back in 2010 I defaulted on an overdraft. I was young, living alone and my parents had died/weren’t in the picture and I was doing everything I could to stay afloat with a roof over my head. It stayed on my credit records for 6 years and delayed me buying a house as no mortgage company would touch me. I paid everything off, and became excellent with money. I bought a house nearly 2 years and have never missed a payment on anything since 2010.

I have a credit card I use mostly for purchases where I’m not sure whether I need to make a return and large purchases for insurance. I pay it off in full every month. I never set up automatic payment, which I now realise was extremely foolish, as I never forgot to do it.

This year I had a baby, and this method of remembering to pay it off in full every month was tested. I didn’t pay the full amount three times, but did pay more than the minimum. I’ve received 3 interest payments of 5p, 5p and £2.50. Tiny amounts!

Now this is why I’m worrying. I remembered this morning my credit card bill payment of £22 is due tomorrow, so I made a payment. But I’ve got myself all worked up because tomorrow is Saturday, so it won’t go through until Monday. I guess nothing will happen tomorrow anyway(?) but will it matter if the credit card company receive my payment the same day as it’s due? I’m so worried I’ve ruined everything by paying the day before and my three interest payments of less than £3!

I checked my credit score and it’s only just in good where as it was excellent before I bought my house. I’ve actually just realise I’m not registered to vote. Does this add a lot of points to a score? Can paying £3 interest impact my score?

I realise this all sounds very silly, OTT and naive, but it took me so long to crawl out of the debt and black marks against my name, and impacted me financially for years. I’m spiralling with worry. Does anyone have any advice?

You need to go to sleep and think about this with clear head😉

I think it’s unlikely you’ll get a late payment marker, but even if you do one late payment is not going to “ruin” your credit rating.

Definitely register for the electoral register and please please set up a direct debit to pay the minimum required. The interest charges makes no difference so don’t get hung up on that, the most important things are paying the contractual minimum payment on time. The amount you are borrowing v the amount of credit you have available also can matter.

ie it doesn’t look good if all your cards are maxed out, but it also isn’t good for lenders if you have heaps of available credit because people can have situations where they decide to use all their available credit and it’s not manageable for them.

As a last note it does feel like your catastrophising a little bit. Is this really just about this payment, or are there other things that are also stressing you out? I hope you are ok x

Just to make it clear. The answer to credit damage is no.

And set up the auto payment thing!

I actually missed a payment but I completely missed it because my debit card had been used for fraudulent purposes and I was awaiting a new debit card and it was one of those bloody things that was attached to the card not the bank account anyway, I missed one month I don’t know whether it matters whether you miss it by one day or the entire month but it did indeed stop me getting a mortgage I had to go for a more expensive one 3.4% then everybody else was getting one percent.
you have to be really careful with these things .