What Is a Credit Score?

A credit score is a way for lenders to decide how much of a risk they are taking by lending you money. The actual credit scoring system used will vary from lender to lender and different companies will have different attitudes to risk – so although one company may reject you for credit, another may be happy to give you a credit line.

It is a myth that there is a universal credit rating or a credit ‘black list’. However if one company believes you are too high a risk and won’t lend you money, it is highly likely that many other companies will take the same view.  Read more... (1280 words, estimated 5:07 mins reading time)

Consumers are being urged to be on their guard when booking their holidays online. Attempting to cash in on the internet boom and bargain holiday seeking, some scam websites have been defrauding people of cash.

Morairaway.com was a website promoting holiday villas. Estimated to have taken around $2 million this summer, consumers paid their money for luxury villas only to discover when arriving at their destination that the villas did not exist.

Some holidaymakers have been stung for thousands in the scam. Some enterprising souls even drove to Morairaway’s ‘head office’ only to discover it was nothing more than an office with post boxes.  Read more... (461 words, estimated 1:51 mins reading time)

Experts have warned that money management firms are misleading consumers by claiming that credit card debt can be written off my exploiting loopholes in the law.

Many companies are now claiming that clauses in the paperwork for credit cards are in breach of the Consumer Credit Act and this means that the contracts are unenforceable and the debt can therefore be wiped out.

Consumers have been warned that although this has been true with some credit card debt cases, this does not apply to the majority of people. Clients often have to pay a large fee up-front to these debt management companies, only to find out that they are unable to wipe their credit card debt out and are therefore left even further in debt and out of pocket.  Read more... (222 words, estimated 53 secs reading time)

Once you get into the habit of using a pawn shop, it can be a hard job to kick the habit. Many people can see this, but have no other alternatives to help make ends meet – pawnshops are an easy way of accessing quick cash and, like most things, have both positive and negative aspects associated with them.

So how exactly do they work? It’s actually a pretty straightforward process. A pawnbroker lends a customer a small amount of money in return for some collateral (jewellery, electrical items, mobile phones etc). This collateral normally has a slightly higher resale value than the loan given and acts as a guarantee for the loan. The beauty of using objects as collateral is that no credit checks need to be done.  Read more... (553 words, estimated 2:13 mins reading time)

Most people have seen them, the e-mail that purport to be from your bank, credit card company or well-known company which claims you need to log into a site in order to update their records for security reasons or a systems upgrade. Yet more often than not, the email is a scam, designed by criminals to get you to ‘login’ to their fake site (which often looks uncannily like the real thing) so that they can grab your details and use them for nefarious purposes.  Read more... (435 words, 1 image, estimated 1:44 mins reading time)

Currently, the financial markets are in turmoil and there are serious questions over whether some countries are headed for a recession or not. With the current economic climate, it is a wise idea to take stock of your finances, particularly as many experts are predicting that we could be in this for the long haul.

Here at Moneytowers.com, we have put together a list of five easy steps we can all look at doing to help to protect ourselves during this credit crunch.  Read more... (984 words, 1 image, estimated 3:56 mins reading time)

Recently, there has been much written in the papers about increasing levels of people being turned down for credit for a number of reasons, leading to confusion about credit ratings. So, here at MoneyTowers.com, we have put together a list of the top five facts and fictions about credit ratings.

Five Credit Rating Facts  Read more... (785 words, 2 images, estimated 3:08 mins reading time)