When your kids have grown up and flown the nest you still worry about them and want to help where you can, but it can be incredibly frustrating when they don’t listen.
My eldest daughter is 20 and currently has a good job and lives in a rented room in a large family house, which she loves! Like all young women she loves new clothes, shoes and handbags and enjoys nothing more than going out and enjoying herself or going horse riding with her friends.
So why am I frustrated??
She wants to move into a flat with her friend and wants a new car but refuses to save money. Very often she gets close to the end of the month and tries the bank of mum and dad, which I have to admit has been well and truly closed for quite some time!
She has got better managing her money more recently, however one thing is getting in her way…her credit rating.
She is desperate for a new car – not brand new, but something better than what she has now. However she has been turned down for credit by both the bank (where she works) and the finance company due to her credit check. It’s easy to do a credit check online … so that you know what you are dealing with, but she didn’t realise this at the time so couldn’t understand what was going wrong.
We gave her lots of advice on how to improve it at the beginning of the year, but she hasn’t done anything about it and then got really upset when she was turned down again last week.
There have been lots of TV shows about improving your credit rating and I have to admit that I am a big fan of Martin Lewis and his website Money Saving Expert, which has given some invaluable advice.
In my daughter’s case, the first problem is that she was not listed on the Electoral roll. This was easy to rectify and all it took was a simple form to fill in from the local council website.
Her second issue is, she still has half her bills coming to our house and half to where she lives now so she is under strict orders to change all her details so they are correct.
It is really hard to not step in and try and resolve this for her, so I have also recommended that she gets a free credit reference check to see if there are any others issues stopping her from obtaining credit. I think she has got into a credit spiral, where she tries several lenders after a first refusal, which goes against you.
I do worry about her having credit as, like many youngsters, she seems to want
everything “immediately” – but sadly if you want a car these days then credit is very often the only option and it can be as much of a nightmare to obtain if you “no credit history” as if you have a “poor credit history”.
I am hoping these things will help her, and hopefully with the savings she promises she is making, she may have a new car or a new flat sooner rather than later.