Meaning & use
personal credit
Last updated
Meanings
noununcountable
Money lent to an individual for private use, such as a loan or credit card balance, rather than to a business.
Grammar: Usually no article: personal credit is harder to get after a default.
Patterns
- apply for personal credit
- personal credit from someone
She used personal credit to pay for the car repairs.
Banks tightened personal credit during the recession.
Missing payments can make personal credit more expensive.
noununcountable
A person's trustworthiness as a borrower, judged from how reliably they have repaid debts.
Grammar: Often used about reputation: his personal credit was good.
Patterns
- damage someone's personal credit
Years of late payments ruined his personal credit.
A good personal credit history helps when you need a mortgage.
Common combinations
- personal credit history
- Lenders look closely at your personal credit history.
- personal credit card
- He put the flight on his personal credit card.
- personal credit limit
- The bank raised her personal credit limit.
- build personal credit
- Young people often struggle to build personal credit.
- personal credit report
- You can request a free personal credit report each year.
Synonyms and how they differ
- consumer credit
- Consumer credit is the usual term in economics, covering lending to households for buying goods and services.
- personal loan
- A personal loan is one specific type of borrowing, while personal credit is the wider idea.
- creditworthiness
- Creditworthiness focuses only on how reliable a borrower seems, which matches the second sense of personal credit.
Opposites
Word family
- credit noun
- an arrangement to pay later
- creditor noun
- a person or firm owed money
- creditworthy adjective
- considered a safe borrower
- credit score noun
- a number that rates your reliability as a borrower
Commonly confused: personal credit or personal debt?
personal credit vs personal debt
Personal debt is the amount of money someone owes, while personal credit is the ability or arrangement to borrow.
Practice
Which sentence uses 'personal credit' to mean borrowing for private use?
Choose one answer.
Personal credit here means money borrowed by an individual. The bond is corporate borrowing, and the last two sentences describe praise, not borrowing.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “personal credit”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.