Credit score and remortgaging

[TeaChocKitKat]

I'm about to pay off some old debts and credit cards which should improve my credit score. How long will it take to be reflected in my score? It will really reduce my monthly outgoings. I also want to remortgage soon and I'm thinking if I hang on until my credit rating has updated, I'll probably get a better deal?
Is anyone able to advise please?

Think it takes up to 12 weeks

Your score is irrelevant. No one sees it apart from you.

Exposure to debt matters though, even if the 'score' is fabricated.

You don't have a 'credit score' as such no matter what all the credit scoring companies tell you and it might not make a difference to your remortgaging costs, more about whether or not you'll get accepted for a certain product.

You will obviously look better to a lender if you've paid debts off so it's worth checking that this has been updated, probably takes a month or two to filter through. However, if any of these old debts were late/defaulted on, that will be on your record for up to 6 years, even after they've been paid off.

You probably just want to pay your debts off, save as much as you can, and apply for a remortgage as normal when the time comes and see what happens.

It's probably worth cancelling some of the credit cards, but not all of them. Having a credit card that you only use a small percentage of the credit limit and pay it off in full each month is probably the best thing you can do to improve how mortgage lenders see you as you're showing you're managing credit responsibly.

Counter-intuitively, any use of an overdraft is seen as a negative, so always use a credit card, not an overdraft to manage cashflow for essential expenditure if necessary.

Different agencies have their own schedules for updating your score, and this also depends on when different creditors report to them.

there is no consistent 1 day of the month on which any CRA updates their scores, but credit reporting always revolves around some variation of a monthly schedule. With this in mind it is worth checking at least once a month to get a clear picture of where everything is going, but you could even check every day if you really want to and you'll still see differences on that basis sometimes.