Credit Card use and UC

[LalalaLava]

I am reorganising my finances this year to keep track of spending and improve my credit score. A problem I have is that between universal credit (paid mid month), my wage (paid at end of month), child maintenance (sporadic) and child benefit, I am getting 4 payments through the month and at times my balance is dipping to zero which means I have to take money from savings to settle a bill until I get funds in again.

I plan to leave my current account to build up funds through the month with only direct debits and childcare bills to be paid from it. All other discretionary spending - groceries, fuel, clothes, days out etc will be paid from my credit card which I will monitor through the month to see when I am reaching my budgeted spending limit (£900 for all this). Then I have set up the direct debit to pay my credit card balance in full.

I have £2k sitting in my current account which will act as a buffer should this plan back fire and I over spend but I plan not to touch it and hope that this method will allow me to not dip into my savings at various points in the month.

I assume this is fine from the universal credit perspective. It means that when reviewed I will not be providing information to them about my day to day spending as all they will be asking to see is my current account statement which will show the credit card payment as a whole. This is fine, right?

I haven't seen much online about finances being managed this way and it's making me worry I've missed something obvious.

Nothing wrong in principle.

Reviews are mostly about looking for undeclared income, not about how you spend money. If they want to see your credit card statements they'll ask but probably unlikely.

As long as you have under £6k in total money there is no problem. If having it on the credit card is taking you over or close then you should manage it carefully (in theory income doesn’t count for the first month but you don’t want tj be having tj justify this)

They aren’t allowed to ask to see what you spend you money on you realise if they ask? They can have copies of your bank statements but redact what you don’t want them seeing - none of their business - and just leave things like rent/utilities and money coming in and out from transfer etc and put a black marker pen through the rest. If they ask about the other things point them to the none of their business legally and they will get into serious trouble if they even ask let alone try and pressure you!!

That is incorrect. You cannot send redacted statements to UC. They want to see statements for all accounts all transactions. Failure to send correct statements to UC will result in the claim being closed and the claimant will owe all their payments back.

Bad advice, if you redact stuff you will have much more hassle. Do not redact anything.
As said above they are looking for undeclared income and savings above a certain amount. They won’t care what you spend your money on or how you move it around.