Repayment
The order to repay debts in, and why people argue about it
Highest rate first costs least. Smallest balance first gets finished more often. Both beat paying minimums.
Nadine Okoro
Editor, The Credit Question
Nadine edits The Credit Question after nine years assessing consumer lending applications.
Contact Nadine through our contact page — mark your message for their attention and it will be passed on.
45 articles
Errors & Disputes
How to get an error off your credit file
Files contain mistakes with some regularity, and the correction process is statutory rather than discretionary.
Protection
Guarantors and joint borrowing carry the whole debt
Guaranteeing a loan is not a character reference. It is an agreement to pay the entire balance.
Protection
Protecting a credit file against fraud
The controls are free, quick to set up and almost never used until after something has happened.
Scores & Files
Checking your own file cannot lower your score
The belief that looking at your own credit report damages it is wrong, and it stops people finding errors that genuinely cost them…
Scores & Files
What a credit file leaves out
The absences explain more declines than the contents do. A file is a record of borrowing, not a record of you.
Borrowing
A longer term lowers the payment and raises the total
Stretching a loan is the most common way people make borrowing affordable, and the arithmetic of what it costs is rarely shown.
Borrowing
Why lenders ask what the money is for
The stated purpose changes the risk, the pricing and sometimes the legal protections attached to the agreement.
Credit Cards
Three separate charges apply when you spend abroad on a card
The exchange rate, the issuer's fee and a conversion offered at the terminal are distinct costs, and only one of them is optional.
Credit Cards
Paying by card can give you a claim against the lender
In several jurisdictions a credit card purchase makes the card issuer jointly responsible if the goods never arrive or are not as…
Credit Cards
Rewards pay you a fraction of what interest takes back
Cashback and points are worth having on a card cleared every month, and worth nothing on a card carrying a balance.
Repayment
Consolidation moves debt; it does not reduce it
One payment instead of five feels like progress. Whether it is depends on the rate, the term and what happens to the cleared…
Repayment
Debt collectors, debt purchasers and who owns your debt now
A letter from a company you have never dealt with usually means one of two very different things, and the difference decides what…
Repayment
Old debts can stop being enforceable, and what restarts the clock
Limitation rules put a time limit on court action for many consumer debts, and an unwary payment or acknowledgement can reset it.
Repayment
An interest freeze changes the arithmetic more than a lower payment
When creditors agree concessions, the one that determines whether the debt ever clears is whether charges stop.
Errors & Disputes
Financial association is the link that outlives the relationship
A single joint account can tie two credit files together for years after the relationship, the account and the memory of it have…
Errors & Disputes
Disputing a default the lender insists is correct
When the first response is that the entry stands, the case is not over. It moves to a different process with different rules.
Errors & Disputes
The paperwork that wins a credit dispute
These cases are decided on documents and dates, which means the outcome is largely determined by what you kept.
Errors & Disputes
A wrong default date is the most expensive error on a file
Of all the mistakes a credit file can contain, a shifted default date is the one that quietly costs the most time.
Errors & Disputes
Notices of correction and who actually reads them
Where an entry is accurate but the story matters, you can attach a statement to your file — with real but limited effect.
Errors & Disputes
Complaints, escalation and the ombudsman route
Most credit disputes that succeed do so at the second or third stage, which is where most people have already stopped.
Protection
Automated decisions and the right to ask for a human
Most credit decisions are made by software in seconds, and several legal regimes give you a way to require that a person looks…
Protection
Continuous payment authorities and how to stop them
A payment set up on a card is not a direct debit, follows different rules, and is cancelled in a different way.
Protection
Scams that specifically target people in debt
Financial difficulty is a marketable signal, and a whole industry buys it. Knowing the pattern is most of the protection.
Protection
Credit repair firms and what they cannot do
Everything a paid file-fixing service can legitimately do, you can do yourself for nothing. Everything else it cannot do at all.
Protection
Coerced debt and borrowing taken under pressure
Debt created through control or intimidation by a partner or relative is a recognised pattern, and there are routes out of it.
Scores & Files
Credit files do not travel across borders
Moving country resets your borrowing record to nothing, and the rebuild follows local rules rather than the ones you left behind.
Scores & Files
Score simulators model a score, not a lending decision
The what-if tools attached to consumer credit reports answer a much narrower question than the one most people are actually asking.
Borrowing
Eligibility checkers tell you about a model, not an offer
A high match percentage is a statistical guess made without the checks that actually decide the application, and it is regularly…
Borrowing
Debt-to-income is the ceiling most applicants meet first
Long before a score decides anything, a lender compares what you owe and what you must pay each month against what you earn.
Borrowing
A decision in principle is not a mortgage offer
The document that makes an estate agent take you seriously commits the lender to almost nothing, and it can be withdrawn.
Borrowing
The fees that sit outside the advertised interest rate
A loan can carry charges that never appear in the rate you compared, and some of them are payable whether or not you borrow.
Credit Cards
Money transfers from a card are not balance transfers
A card can send cash to your bank account, and that transaction sits in its own category with its own charges and risks.
Credit Cards
Deferred interest offers can bill the whole period at once
Some interest-free promotions are conditional, and failing the condition makes the whole deferred amount payable rather than only…
Credit Cards
Closing a card changes more than one number
Cancelling a card you no longer use removes available credit, shortens history in slow motion and occasionally solves nothing at…
Credit Cards
Add-on products sold with a card deserve a second look
Cover and services bundled with a credit account are sold at the moment of least attention, and their exclusions do most of the…
Repayment
Priority debts come before credit debts
Not all debts carry the same consequences for non-payment, and the ones that can take your home or your heating are not the ones…
Repayment
Income and expenditure forms are the language creditors work in
The statement of your household finances is the document that decides what a creditor will accept, and most people fill it in badly.
Errors & Disputes
How long a dispute is allowed to take
Data correction processes usually run to statutory clocks, and knowing the deadlines changes how a stalled dispute is handled.
Protection
A credit freeze stops new lending, not existing debt
Locking your file blocks applications made in your name, and it does nothing at all about the accounts already open.
Protection
Capacity, power of attorney and credit agreements
When someone can no longer manage their own finances, the authority to act has to be formally established before any lender will…
Protection
There are rules about how a collector may contact you
Collection activity is regulated in most countries, and conduct that feels like harassment is often conduct that breaches a…
Protection
The credit-adjacent data held about you that you never see
Beyond the credit file sit fraud databases, marketing segments and screening lists, each with its own rules and its own errors.
Protection
After a data breach, the exposure lasts longer than the headlines
Stolen identity details do not expire, and the fraud built from them frequently arrives long after the incident stops being news.
Protection
A refusal of credit is not a refusal of banking
Being declined for borrowing does not remove your route to an account, and several countries treat basic banking as an entitlement.