Bosgoed Business Projects

In some areas, prospective tenants must pass a credit check, which usually means that you’ll need to have a credit history. How can you have a credit history if you don’t have any credit cards or loans? It seems unfair to require a person to prove his or her financial responsibility by forcing that person to incur debt, however temporary. Most people would argue that the complete absence of any debt also proves a certain amount of financial responsibility, but if your landlord isn’t one of them, you can always sublet a room from an individual who doesn’t care to perform a credit check. You might also have better luck renting in a part of town near a college, because many college students don’t yet have credit histories and area landlords will be used to this. It is possible to rent an apartment without a credit history, but your options may be somewhat limited. (For more on getting an apartment, read Are You Ready To Rent?)

As far as buying a home, if you want to pay all cash, you’ll almost certainly need to choose an inexpensive area to live, at least initially. For example, most people will never have enough money to pay cash for a two-bedroom starter home in even the suburbs of a pricey city like Los Angeles, where most homes can cost well over $500,000 dollars. People who have that much money saved up are often near retirement age, which is longer than most people want to wait to become homeowners.

On the other hand, if you choose to live near the far edges of some major cities, it may easier to buy a home for closer to $100,000, which makes saving up to pay all cash a more reasonable (but still a fairly difficult) goal. Not having to shop for a mortgage will take a lot of the stress out of shopping for and owning a home and might even give you an advantage as a potential buyer over someone who can only put up a down payment. (To learn more, read Be Mortgage-Free Faster.)