Quote
Earlier in this same thread, some were bashing folks for living at home after finishing college. The alternative is to rent or buy a home. You have to have credit to rent, and you have to have credit to buy a home unless you're paying cash. Explain to me how a young adult can make and save enough money by the time they get out of school to buy a home in cash. They cannot. So their options are 1) live it home for several years while saving every penny and then buying a home in cash, or 2) build credit and rent or take out a mortgage.
This is something we learned the hard way with my daughter. When she graduated nursing school and got a job, she was making more than I did right out of the gate. She was marrying a young man who had been working for a public utility for a couple years, worked his way up a little, and was making decent money. They went to try and buy a house that they could easily afford the payment on but couldn't get financed because neither had ever built any credit. The only way they could get financed was to have a VERY large down payment, which they didn't at the time. The moral of the story.........if you have a young one at home who is close to going out on their own, find a way for them to build some kind of credit ahead of time. With my son, we got a low limit credit card in his name. He puts almost everything on it he buys and then pays the balance when the bill is due to avoid interest. He's been doing this a couple years now so when he graduates he will have some sort of credit score.


The true mark of a man is not how he conducts himself during times of prosperity, but how he conducts himself during times of adversity.