People always told me I need to get one so I can have a good credit rating. For what? So I can pay more interest for a mortgage on a house I’ll never buy?
Credit gives you options. Furnace goes out way sooner than anticipated and you only have $5k in the bank? Take out a loan for the remaining $3-5k to get it done now. Unexpected car repair and you only have $500 after rent in the bank? Whip out the credit card and put the other $500-1000 on there and throw extra money at it until it’s paid off. Yes you’ll pay some interest, but you’ll have a working car, or a working furnace, or whatever other calamity you find yourself facing.
But the biggest thing credit does it lets you buy property much much sooner in life. Property has a wierd habit of gaining value much faster than it should, the payment stays the same for the entire term of the loan, plus with a mortgage every payment buys you slightly more ownership of the property unlike a rent payment which is just money leaving your bank account every month for nothing other than the privilege of the roof over your head for the following month.
For a real world example, I bought my house a couple of years ago for ~120k. I live in a small town so I figured it wouldn’t gain anything other than holding it’s value through inflation. My monthly payment is ~800ish and similar places were renting for ~1k/month. Well thanks to the hyperinflation the last couple of years, my house is now worth closer to 180k and rents are up to $1200-1500/mo for a similar place to the one I own, but I still pay $800/mo for my house. That’s what credit gets you in the long term. It gets you stability and options for when the going gets tough
Credit gives you options. Furnace goes out way sooner than anticipated and you only have $5k in the bank? Take out a loan for the remaining $3-5k to get it done now. Unexpected car repair and you only have $500 after rent in the bank? Whip out the credit card and put the other $500-1000 on there and throw extra money at it until it’s paid off. Yes you’ll pay some interest, but you’ll have a working car, or a working furnace, or whatever other calamity you find yourself facing.
But the biggest thing credit does it lets you buy property much much sooner in life. Property has a wierd habit of gaining value much faster than it should, the payment stays the same for the entire term of the loan, plus with a mortgage every payment buys you slightly more ownership of the property unlike a rent payment which is just money leaving your bank account every month for nothing other than the privilege of the roof over your head for the following month.
For a real world example, I bought my house a couple of years ago for ~120k. I live in a small town so I figured it wouldn’t gain anything other than holding it’s value through inflation. My monthly payment is ~800ish and similar places were renting for ~1k/month. Well thanks to the hyperinflation the last couple of years, my house is now worth closer to 180k and rents are up to $1200-1500/mo for a similar place to the one I own, but I still pay $800/mo for my house. That’s what credit gets you in the long term. It gets you stability and options for when the going gets tough