Credit rating advice

[Arex]

Hi all,

I'm very new to this Credit rating/Finance stuff and was hoping someone could offer some advice/help on a few questions I have, All help is much appreciated

I've recently applied and got accepted to open my first store account (woolworths) so that I can get a credit rating. Its been open for 2 months but I believe I need to open a few more accounts or apply for a credit card as my goal is to apply for vehicle finance towards the start of next year. I've already use my free credit report this year from transunion (which was wasted because it was before all of this and the report was basically empty), I've also used clearscore and my rating is said to be around 610-625 out of 700 (on good ground).

My questions are:

1) I heard that applying and getting rejected for a credit card hurts your rating so should I try to apply for more store accounts (such as piknpay as I shop there frequently) or go straight for credit card now?

2) I've been trying to save some money recently and a method I use is to transfer a few thousand rand (left over income) into my savings account. Would this affect applying for loans/finance as my cheque account will constantly look low on my bank statement.

Any suggestions is much appreciated, Thank you

 

[jhart]

1) This is not true. If you get approved or declined does not reflect on your credit reports. The enquiry does however reflect and stays there for a year. If you apply for a lot of accounts then that will reflect poorly on your credit report and lower your score. They refer to this as credit shopping. I think you will be okay to apply for a credit card. You can sign up at Transunion and Experian. It's about R40/month. Then you can check every day.

2) This will depend on the credit provider since there is no clear answer on this. They use different algorithms and are quite clever these days, so I'm sure you'll be okay.

Take care.