CGN News & Advice – Page 2 – (CGN) Capital Growth Network Ltd

10 QUICK TIPS ON HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR CREDIT SCORE

February 27, 2018/in Blog /by admin

Want to take control of your credit score? Here’s everything you need to know about the factors that count. Credit scores are a complicated business. No-one has a universal credit score. This means there’s no rulebook to tell you how many credit points are lost and won with everything you do financially. Instead, we’re going to talk about the factors that may affect how lenders view you, and how these, in turn, impact your credit score.

1. BANKRUPTCY, CCJ’S AND IVA’S

If you have a CCJ (County Court Judgement) against you, an IVA (Individual Voluntary Arrangement) or bankruptcy, this information is on the public record and becomes part of your credit report.

If lenders see any of these three items marked on your report, it will have a negative impact on your credit score and it’s likely lenders will be less willing to lend to you. This is because your record shows you’ve gone back on some form of financial agreement in the past.

If you do have one of these on your record, make sure you comply with any rules or restrictions you are given. If you ignore what is asked of you, it can have more serious and permanent consequences on your credit score. Using a credit builder credit card very carefully will help you rebuild your credit score.

2. STABILITY WITH YOUR ADDRESS AND THE ELECTORAL ROLL

It’s no surprise to learn that banks and lenders like to know that the people they lend to are reliable and stable – and therefore can be trusted to repay any debts.

One way they determine stability is to look at how long you’ve lived at your address and if you are on the electoral roll. If you’ve been living in one place for a long time, this will be better for your credit score than if you are frequently moving between properties.

In addition to this, being on the electoral roll provides the lender with assurance not only that you are who you say you are, but that you’re settled at your current address (another sign of stability).

3. THE AGE OF YOUR ACCOUNTS

Just like with your address, banks and lenders like to see signs of stability in the age of your credit accounts. So, they like to see that at least one of your credit accounts has been held for several years. Just like your address, this not only proves who you are, but shows you’ve been trusted by another lender over a long period of time. It’s likely to have a positive impact on your credit score if you have an older credit account on there. If your credit accounts are all mostly new this could lower your credit score.

4. APPLYING FOR CREDIT

Every time you make an application for credit, a credit application search (or a ‘hard’ search) will be carried out on your credit report and a mark will be left on your file.

Making an occasional application for credit won’t make much of a difference to your credit score. However, if you make several applications in a short space of time, or if you’re rejected for credit, it’s likely to have a negative impact on your score.

If you want to limit the number of application searches (‘hard’ searches) on your report, you can check your eligibility for a credit product using quotation searches (‘soft’ searches) before you apply. This is better for your credit score, as only you can see the quotation searches on your report (they’re invisible to lenders). You can see your eligibility for products on the Clear Score Offers page of your account.

TIP: Don’t panic if your credit score dips when you’ve applied for a new credit card. If you start using your new product responsibly then your credit score should go back up relatively quickly.

5. MISSING PAYMENTS OR NOT PAYING YOUR DEBT

If you miss a payment or pay late on a debt, this will be marked on your credit report and it’s likely to have a negative effect on your credit score.

If you miss several payments your lender may place your account into ‘default’. Every lender will have different rules for how many payments you’re allowed to miss before you default. Some will allow you to miss up to 6 payments but for some lenders you may only be able to miss 2 payments before you are declared in default.

Defaulting on a debt carries a much heavier penalty on your credit score than missing a payment. Missing and default payments will be marked on your credit report and will stay there for 6 years (the maximum time your credit information is held for). Remember, it’s never too late to pay back a debt. It will always look better on your
credit report to pay down a defaulted account – even if the payment is late and it isn’t for the full amount. It will demonstrate to lenders that you’ve tried to make up for the defaulted payment, and this is always preferable to never paying a debt back at all.

6. HOW MUCH OF YOUR CREDIT LIMIT YOU’RE USING

Your credit utilisation will have an impact on your credit score. For example, if you use too much of your total available credit or too much of a single line of credit, it could damage your score.

Lenders may also consider this when they’re assessing your creditworthiness and ability to pay back credit. Equifax have created the following traffic light system as a guide to show how credit utilisation might impact your credit score:-

If you use less than 50% of your total credit limit, it shouldn’t have a negative impact on your credit score (‘green flag’)
If you use between 50% – 75% of your total credit limit, this will show up as an ‘amber flag’ on your credit report, meaning it may have an effect on your credit score
If you are using more than 75% of your total credit limit, this will be a ‘red flag’ on your credit report, and it’s likely to have a negative effect on your credit score.

This means, ideally, you should think about carefully managing your credit utilisation. So for example, if your total limit is £1000, you might not want to use more than £500. If you have multiple cards or accounts, you might want to share out the amount you’re borrowing across the cards, rather than maxing out one card (but only if this makes financial sense).

7. LARGER CREDIT CARD LIMITS

If you have one credit card with a relatively high credit limit, this may have a positive effect on your credit score as it shows you’re trusted with this level of credit.

8. MISTAKES ON YOUR REPORT

Mistakes on credit reports can and do happen, and these can have a negative effect on your credit report. Some of the most common errors include incorrect names and addresses, but other details such as whether you’re on the electoral roll, your debt levels and account status can have errors as well.

If your name or address have errors or if you have used different names/addresses for different accounts some of your accounts may not appear on your credit report. This may mean you lose out on any positive effects that these accounts may have on your credit score. Make sure you look at the ‘accounts’ section of your credit report to check all of your accounts are there and there’s nothing you don’t recognise.
If you want a cheat sheet of things to check on your credit report, you can use our article here.

9. NOT HAVING ANY ACTIVE CREDIT AGREEMENTS OR CREDIT HISTORY
If you don’t have any active credit accounts – i.e. ones that you’re currently using – this may have a negative impact on your credit score. The reason for this is that lenders have no current information about your ability to borrow money and repay it reliably, and therefore you may be seen to be a greater credit risk. If you have no credit history you may struggle to be approved for credit in the first place.

10. Other factors relating to your credit limit may also affect your credit score. For example,

Making sure your current Telecoms balance is kept low
Staying within your credit card limit each year

CREATE WEALTH AND FREEDOM IN 2018

February 20, 2018/in Frontpage Article /by admin

The average person in the UK spends £16 per week on the lottery and lottery scratch cards and games of chance. They do that with a one in 14 million chance of being wealthy – but there is a better way! By investing your money you could have a 100% chance of being wealthy in your lifetime.

We may not be aware of exactly how much we spend on incidentals such as coffee each month, but research shows us that it is likely to be about £100 a month which is spent – or perhaps we should say ‘wasted’ on just buying coffee.

It is an absolute truth that if we just invested a little of this money wasted on incidentals we could make a significant difference to our financial lives over time, and we may even be able to make ourselves financially free with it.

There’s the hard way and then there’s the easy way and it can all begin with as little as £2.25…such a small amount of money. In fact, it is less than a:

Fancy cup of coffee in a high street coffee shop
Magazine to read on the train
Drink at the pub

…and all you need to do is save £2.25 per day for your working life (for us that means from the ages of 18 to 65) into an investment fund which produces 11.7% return (or 12% to make it simpler), and you will end up with £1,000,000 or more. And that’s it.

REMEMBER, money is the right of those who understand and apply some simple steps.

To find out how to make your £1 million….starting with just £2.25 simply click here and start reading Gill’s FREE guide.

7 BIG MONEY MISTAKES

February 20, 2018/in Article /by admin

1. Believing that wealth isn’t for you
We know the first step to becoming wealthy, is to believe that you can be – otherwise you won’t keep anything you make. The first step is to work out what you believe – and if you don’t know – keep a diary and when anything financial happens to you – you get paid or receive a bill, how do you feel – joyous or despondent? Once you work out what makes you feel bad then attack that belief by asking yourself – repeatedly until you have the answer and the belief changes:

2. Forgetting that pennies count
Money is like a plant on your kitchen windowsill – it will grow if you feed it and water it. Also most pot plants grow from tiny seeds– and money is the same. Small amounts of money properly planted and looked after WILL grow into a massive amount of wealth.

3. Putting your head in the sand
I meet people who tell me they haven’t opened a bank statement in many years and that all brown envelopes get put under the carpet, and sadly this ‘head in the sand’ approach to money is damaging, totally unsuccessful, and frankly ridiculous.

4. Not controlling debt
We may get overwhelmed with debt from time to time but as long as we maintain control then we can manage that debt without fear or panic. As with most things, if we are fearful we tend to make the ‘wrong’ decisions and create more challenges, but with a sensible, and controlled action plan, we can manage our way into calmer waters.

5. Not knowing or understanding your credit score
There are seven steps we can take to improve our credit score by getting control of the issue:
Turn detective
Turn cleaner
Be dull
Go solo
Get active
Be good!
Get Control

6. Ignoring the future
When you have got control of your current position now it’s time to look to the future as most people fail to plan for their financial future and if you fail to plan then sadly you are planning to fail! Most people in the UK, USA and most of the western cultures retire with insufficient means to see them through retirement – and in the UK that means that you have to try and live on the government pension which can’t be done because it’s pathetic!

7. Putting all your eggs into one basket
Doing this is risky. If that one thing gets lost, stolen or fails in any way then all the wealth is gone, so we must get used to the concept of spreading everything we have.

Click here to download the full guide

5 PASSIVE INCOME IDEAS

February 20, 2018/in Frontpage Article /by admin

THINKING OF INVESTING IN YOUR FIRST PROPERTY?

February 20, 2018/in Article /by admin

Gill Fielding’s Investment Property Purchase Check List covers all the positive and negative criteria for viewing properties and purchasing that first piece of prime real estate investment.

Click here to download the checklist

AN UPLIFT IN FEBRUARY

February 20, 2018/in Article /by admin

Well what a cold and miserable time of year it is! It can also be expensive and I’ve certainly had a burst pipe at one of my properties. At times like this it’s important to focus on the bigger picture and the larger strategy and vision – and that helps to ‘see’ the minor winter challenges in ’smaller’ focus. The challenges are always there of course but it’s important not to focus on them – as when you do, they then seem to get a great deal larger. So here’s some good news! House prices increased by 0.6 per cent in January when traditionally they are static at best, even after taking account of seasonal factors. Also, Jeremy Leaf – a former RICS residential chairman – says: “At the sharp end we have seen an uplift in terms of viewings and more confidence than we dared to expect”. That’s all good.

The other piece of news that caught my eye was that the Office of National Statistics have revealed that the self-employed are more likely to own property than employed workers, suggesting that their prospects are less fragile than might have been thought. Figures show that 73.1 per cent of employees aged between 35 and 54 have property wealth. This figure rises to 74.7 per cent for the self-employed. The numbers also reveal that 27 per cent of the self-employed aged 35 to 54 have property wealth of at least £250,000, compared with 17.6 per cent of the employed.

Now that’s interesting news – could it be that people are finally realising that being self-reliant and taking responsibility for yourself, your work and your money is a much ‘safer’ route to financial success than having a ‘JustOverBroke’!

Happy Investing!
Gill

MEET GILL FIELDING

January 4, 2018/in Article /by admin

Gill Fielding is a self-made millionaire with a no-nonsense, positive approach to finance and a personal mission to educate the nation in managing and improving their own financial position. She is best known for her appearance on Channel 4’s The Secret Millionaire when she gave away nearly £250,000 to good causes.

Gill Fielding’s Top Ten Tips for Wealth Creation
1. Understand where you want to be Everybody has wildly different perceptions about money and what wealth means – you have to discover what wealth means to you: one man’s riches may be peanuts to someone else. Think about what you really want in terms of money.

2. Work out exactly what you have

If you don’t know what you’ve got and what wealth you want to have – how on earth can you work out how to bridge the gap! Start recording your assets and liabilities and your regular cash-flows.

3. Understand your relationship to money It’s an obvious statement, but if you think you are bad at maths for examples, for sure you will be – because humans have a remarkable ability to bring their beliefs into reality. The same is true for money: if you think you are bad at it, or you are scared of money or don’t believe you are worthy of wealth – then you will never keep money until you resolve those issues.

4. Understand money flows Money is like water, it flows in and out. Unfortunately, most people let it flow out in a flood but only have a trickle coming in – so address that. Be aware of your cash flows, minimise your outflows – do you really need that gym membership for example?

5. Understand Debt There is a good debt and bad debt and understanding the difference is fundamental. Be aware of what you owe and why you owe it: dig out statements and force yourself to understand the rate you are paying on any debt and remember “Never borrow to spend – only borrow to invest”.

6. Understand the basics of compounding Compounding has the ability to make you a millionaire in your lifetime with 100% certainty – with just £2.25 per day – do you know how to do that?

7. Invest in Property Land is a scarce resource and apparently God isn’t making any more! Returns from property over time have been staggering – and often people make more money on the increased value in their own home than they do working for a living – make sure you capture some of that growth.

8. Be aware of the Governments proposals for wealth creation The Government has created many wealth making opportunities for those of us ‘in the know’, particularly in the pension’s arena. If you can overcome your ‘dislike’ of all things pensions, tax and governmental, you could get access to large injections in your wealth pool.

9. Invest in Business The key to massive growth in business value is to understand that the real success comes from making the business passive to you – any investment you can make where you don’t have to do any work but yet you reap the returns is worth investigating.

10. Celebrate and review As a nation we are very poor at celebrating our success and moving forward onto new levels. Set yourself performance goals and celebrate when you achieve them. At that stage move your wealth creation strategies up a notch – and go for it!

THE PROPERTY MARKET

August 22, 2016/in Article /by admin

Following the EU referendum, one of the many implications of ‘Brexit’ will be an initial decline to the price of properties in the UK beginning in 2017. The best investors in the world tend to buy low and sell high so 2017 would seem to be the best possible opportunity to capitalise on falling property prices. The property market can offer extremely high returns on capital but it is an increasingly risky industry to enter. Government blocks are creating new barriers to entry for would be investors so accredited industry qualifications are becoming essential.

Fielding Financial offer courses on how to successfully invest in property. Book yourself in for one of their FREE seminars for an in depth solution to investing in property.

for more information on how to invest in property, click here