The Financial Blog

According to research by the price comparison site Moneysupermarket.com, 13 per cent of us skipped paying a bill last year. As an example, we regard paying for our satellite TV a higher priority than making credit card repayments!

Nearly 5.5 million Brits missed payments on credit card bills last year, which could seriously affect their credit ratings.

Credit cards bills are the most likely to be missed by consumers aged 25 and over, the under 25’s are more likely to miss a mobile phone payment. When I say ‘miss’ a payment in this context its people who ‘ignore’ these bills rather than unintentionally forget to make the payment.

Head of credit cards at moneysupermarket.com, Steve Willey, said: “Close to three million credit card holders will have paid out over £35 million between them in penalty fees.2 But it is the damage to their credit rating that is more costly to them and to the other 2.5 million consumers who have missed payments elsewhere.

“Consumers may feel by missing a payment they’re saving a few pounds but in the long run, missing the occasional payment will affect your credit rating as lenders assess your overall ability to repay on a regular basis. It’s vital consumers do everything they can to protect their credit rating and this means keeping payments up to date. A poor credit score stays with you for a long time and can mean being rejected for credit or being offered a product at a worse rate.

“It is much better to pay that minimum monthly balance rather than not pay anything at all.  By setting up minimum payments by Direct Debit, you can at least take the first step in ensuring your credit profile is protected while you decide how much extra you can afford to repay to each bill”

If you apply for any of the credit cards on the right of this page or any other form of credit you must keep up with repayments.>>>

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 9th, 2008 at 12:21 pm and is filed under Credit Cards. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.