Does Betting Affect Credit Score?
Placing bets on the sports teams you’re cheering for and spinning the reels are the favourite pastimes of many Brits. At the same time, many a good man has been financially destroyed by a gambling addiction. Finding a balance between stable money matters and enjoying gambling activities can be challenging. Does betting affect your credit score, though? It definitely can, along with other aspects of your life. However, a quick flutter on the horses probably won’t get in the way of your dreams of owning a home. That said, you should be careful with your gambling financial transactions, so here’s a quick guide on how your credit score works and how gambling can affect it.
Credit Score Basics
If you aren’t familiar with credit scores, here’s a quick rundown. Your credit score is a number that depicts your creditworthiness and predicts how likely you are to pay back your loans on time. What affects a credit score in the UK? It is based on credit reports and includes factors such as the state of your previous loans and credit cards. It records your history of credit repayment, including payments you’ve missed over the last six years.
If you have defaulted on a loan, your credit score will most likely go down; if you repaid all the monthly instalments, it would go up. Credit score can be complicated since each of the three major bureaus calculates it differently. That said, Experian is the largest one, so let’s look at their numbs. A credit score of 721 – 880 is considered fair, whereas a score of 881 – 960 is good and that of 961 – 999 is excellent. If you have a bad score, don’t despair, as it’s changeable over time once you can prove that you’re reliable with payments.
Are Gambling Activities Visible on My Credit Score?
If you’ve been wondering how to hide gambling transactions, you can put your mind at ease. Even if you’re placing bets online or using your credit card instead of cash for deposits, your credit score won’t show any of this. Your credit score is simply an assessment of your creditworthiness and your ability to pay back loans on time, and it has nothing to do with the way you’re spending your money on other things.
However, if you’re borrowing money to pay back your gambling debts and often withdraw money to cover bad hands you lose and chase losses, your credit score will suffer anyway. No one will know why exactly you are doing such damage to your credit score, but it will happen, nonetheless.
Does Betting Affect Your Credit Score?
The short answer is: yes, and no. However, to what extent, and in which ways, is yet another thing. In the case of occasional flutters, there won’t be any effects on your credit score. Also, casual punters who spend less than £100 per month on online bookies won’t get a worse assessment of their creditworthiness. If you have your gambling under control and treat it as a pastime, you’ll still be eligible to secure that home loan you’ve been dreaming about.
Compulsive gamblers tend to spend a lot of money chasing losses; as a result, they quickly fall into overdrafts and have trouble paying off their balances. Although gambling transactions on a bank statement remain hidden, your potential lender will see that you’ve been borrowing more than you can pay back and that you have huge fluctuations and discrepancies between deposits and withdrawals.
Professional gamblers, on the other hand, financially depend on their gambling income, which can be a very unstable source of livelihood. That’s why most of them will have trouble securing a loan. Lenders tend to cooperate financially only with reliable and responsible clients who can cover monthly instalments with their regular income. Those struggling to break the debt cycle won’t be observed as promising candidates for a bank loan.
Does Betting Affect Mortgage Applications?
Applying for a mortgage undoubtedly means more thorough examinations of your financial habits and credit score. The lender will probably check your monthly income and ask for at least three to six months’ bank statements to see if it’s following a positive trend. You’ll be summoned for an interview regarding your spending habits, too.
Seeing that you have frequent outgoing payments to gambling companies will probably rule you out as a candidate for a mortgage. Even worse, if the financial agent learns that you have been borrowing money to cover your gambling debts or payments, that’ll be a huge red flag. So, does gambling affect your mortgage application? Definitely yes, as the bank would assume that you will gamble its money to cover your expenses and turn you down.
How to Increase My Chances of Being Approved?
Now that you know that lenders always consider risk indicators when deciding on approving your mortgage or personal loan application, you can take steps toward improving your chances for a positive outcome. If you have been using an unarranged overdraft, or if you have recent borrowings, payday loans, gambling activities, and returned direct debits, your prospects for getting a loan will sharply decrease. We’ve seen cases of a refused mortgage due to gambling, so let’s help you avoid that at any cost.
- Avoid gambling for a while; this goes without saying, but we feel we should underline the importance of refraining from all betting activities for at least three months prior to your application. If you already have a bad credit score, do not gamble at all. In other cases, occasional bets on football won’t make a difference to most people, but if your starting position is already bad, refrain from it entirely.
- Gamble with cash; if you cannot resist your urges, it’s always better to use cryptocurrency for gambling on online betting apps or cash in brick-and-mortar establishments. If you pay your bets with cold hard cash, the bookie won’t keep any records that can affect your credit score. Do betting accounts affect credit rating, and is it a good idea to have a separate one used only for gambling purposes? Yes, using the prepaid credit or debit card linked to an account that doesn’t have an overdraft and thus doesn’t collect your data for credit reference agencies would be a good idea. Also, if you’re betting online, make sure to use cryptocurrency instead of your credit and debit cards.
- Gamble Responsibly; responsible gambling means that you should be aware of your limits and never chase your losses because you’ll be climbing a slippery slope and potentially end up in bankruptcy. There are numerous credit score apps in the UK that can help you access your score and behave accordingly. Do not tap into your savings or money that you set aside for rent and bills, let alone borrow it from family, friends, or banks. If you find it difficult to refrain from betting, employ gambling controls on your online account and set cool-off and self-exclusion periods.
Bottom Line
As we’ve already seen, the answer to the question “Does Betting Affect Your Credit Score?” is not so simple. Your credit score won’t get lowered just because you’re engaged in gambling activities, but the results of those activities may hurt it.
However, if you’re planning on applying for a personal or car loan or a mortgage, your gambling habits will definitely affect your credibility, and banks will probably turn your application down. On top of that, gambling habits most certainly lead to activities that do affect your credit score in the long term. Risk indicators such as borrowing a lot, falling behind your monthly payments, or using your overdraft often, will inevitably lead to bad credit.
FAQ
Can gamblers get a mortgage?
“Can gambling affect credit score?” and “Can you get a mortgage if you are a gambler?” are two different but related questions. Even though credit report agencies do not care whether you spend your money on gambling or something else, banks you apply with for your mortgage certainly do. You’ll be invited to an interview, have a thorough examination of your financial habits, and be required to submit bank statements going back from three to six months.
Do banks look at gambling?
If you apply for a mortgage, banks will thoroughly check your transactions and bank statements and be informed about your gambling activities.
Does betting affect your credit score in the UK?
As the UK credit checkers do not care for which purposes you’re using your balance and simply estimate your ability to pay back the loans based on your previous financial transactions, your credit score won’t be affected directly. However, the betting itself carries many risk factors that indirectly influence your credit score: borrowing money to chase losses, spending more than you can afford, falling into your overdraft, and withdrawing large amounts of money often, can all potentially mess up your credit score.
