There are many reasons why you may end up with bad credit.
You may have been self employed and taken out a self cert mortgage.
You may have over estimated your potential income and can not longer keep up with the payments and have accrued mortgage arrears.
You may have taken out a secured loan and circumstances have changed.
Maybe you became redundant or got ill or had a baby and your income is no longer what it once was.
As soon as you fall behind on payments then a flag goes up against your credit rating.
If you do not keep up your repayments to a secured loan or build up mortgage arrears on your self cert mortgage the result will be a bad credit rating.
It is far quicker to get one then it is to get rid of it.
Try your utmost to resist falling into debt but if it does happen then help can be found from various sources.
Firstly though you should try to find the money to pay for whatever the amount is outstanding that will keep you out of mortgage arrears or bad credit.
You may have some savings and this would be an opportune time to dip into them to help yourself out of this spot of bother.
If the event that has caused your ability to repay, only going to affect you temporarily, then talk with your lender.
They are probably going to be keen to try and work with you to try to resolve the issue.
You may already have the possibility of a payment holiday written into your agreement.
This may not come into force automatically and it may be up to you to invoke it.
You could also try negotiating with your self cert mortgage or secured loan lender.
They may be able to offer you a deal to keep away from serious debt.
They may be able to let you pay less for a short period of time if you pay more or double for a time straight after that.
Or they may let you elongate your period of borrowing.