For an almost 30 year old I’m pretty naive about ‘adult’ things. I’m not going to pretend and give you some top advice for the best possible ways to conquer adult-hood like it’s something you can win, but I am going to pose you a question that might seem a little silly.
Do you have credit?
For me, for my entire life, I’ve been a saver. I have always had money in my account because I’m very low maintenance. I don’t drink, I don’t buy a lot of clothes, I don’t have loads of bills to pay because I live at home still and manage to only pay pittance to my parents. Sure, this sounds like I’m living a great life. I am, to be fair, but it’s not done me any favours.
This kind of sheltered living has left me a little bit stumped when I’ve come to the decision to actually buy a house, or, to put it more accurately, to get a mortgage and borrow money from the damn bank.
Sadly there is no choice when it comes to buying a house. For 99.9% of us we have to borrow money to buy a house but did you know it’s pretty difficult to get a mortgage when you don’t have ‘credit’.
Ah… credit. The word sounds good, I mean, why would credit be bad? Well, that’s just it. That’s not to say I have BAD credit, I just don’t have ANY credit… not really. I’m not blacklisted or anything but it’s because I’ve not got a credit history because I’ve never had to borrow at all…
If you’re like me and have never had the need to get a credit card but you are, at some point in you life, going to want to buy a house and, thus, borrow money you might want to get a head start on it all.
GET A CREDIT CARD.
I am not one to suggest such things for the sake of telling people to buy things they can’t afford. In fact, that’s one of my huge world pet-peeves, however… there is this random rule that if you’ve never borrowed money you are a risk for actually borrowing money because you have no ‘credit history’. It’s backwards, yes, but it’s this thing!
I have just had to get a credit card just for the sake of moving all my current direct debits onto it so that I can then pay the bill to the credit card rather than from my actual bank account…
Sound stupid? It is! Sound obvious? I didn’t think so.
Life confuses me. Why is the world so backwards?!
Sam
Pretty Thoughtful Blog 