What Bills Help Build Credit?

While missing monthly repayments can negatively impact your credit score, regularly repaying your bills improves your credit score. However, this is only true for some accounts. Not all creditors report to credit bureaus. The accounts that are most likely going to affect your credit score in some way are:

• Rent and mortgage
• Utilities
• Cable, wireless, or mobile phones
• Insurance
• Car repayments
• Student loan
• Credit cards
• Medical bills 

Any of these bills could affect your score; however, they may not always affect your score if they are not reported.

Why are some bills not reported?

For one, not all credit card companies report to the credit bureau because it is voluntary. Some choose not to because it is an extra administrative step. Some only report to one or two of the major bureaus, meaning you could have a different credit report depending on which bureau you check with. In other cases, missed repayments may be reported while on-time repayments are not. Generally, rent, mortgage, car, student loans, and credit card repayments are reported to the bureaus. So keeping a regular repayment schedule with those bills is essential. 

Consolidating Bills

If you are struggling to keep up with your monthly repayments, especially if each bill is due on different days, you could consider applying for a loan to consolidate your debts. While this is not recommended for everybody, if you consider applying for a debt consolidation loan or refinancing your home loan to consolidate debts, consult with the brokers at Mortgage House. We are a non-bank lender specialising in home loans and other finance options. We can help you refinance your loan to help make repaying bills less stressful so you can improve your credit score.