To Be With or To Be Without a Credit History

I have been trying to find a new place to move and have found out just how much the world depends upon credit and the history of it.

I have been checking out apartments all over the west-side of Los Angeles, such as Venice, Santa Monica, Mar Vista and Playa del Rey. Once I got over the sticker shock, I started to run into possible problems with the management companies. It used to be that there were many mom-and-pop buildings in this town and you were checked out, but you could get in by making a good impression on the manager; not any more. Now, most buildings are operated by these management companies that don’t seem to care about anything but covering their corporate butts by making sure that applications are near perfect credit and as minimal risk as possible.

So what does someone do who actually carries no debt do? My pop instilled what seemed to be an excellent cash-flow philosophy that has since reeked havoc in my life.

Don’t spend more than you have and only buy what you can afford,

Spirit Geek’s Dad

hence I have never really used credit.

A short while ago, I started an investment into a piece of property in Tucson, AZ. I figured that when it was finished and I owned it outright, I would take out an equity loan and see about investing in some other property since I use a technique that allows me to acquire it for pennies on the dollar.

Since I live very simply, I never really worried about identity theft. Who in their right mind would want to be me financially? The closest to ID theft I ever came was a (suspected) slightly disreputable website that got a bit ticked when I managed to track him down in Toronto and ask for both a cancellation of my membership, but also a refund for a duplicate billing. But that’s another story for another time.

I went to Annual Credit Report and managed to get a copy of my credit report from all 3 of the major agencies.

The only thing that actually showed up was an ancient Sprint bill. I had lost my cellphone and though reported to Sprint and promised that they would turn the phone off and I wouldn’t be billed, they didn’t and I was to the tune of $120. They had sold the collection account to some company (that never actually contacted me though my address was on the reports) but was kind enough to report every 3 months the overdue account. (Nice, huh?)

Anyhow, the point of all this is that my lack of credit history and the tendency of the management companies is not making my life easy. Fortunately, I am not in any hurry and I can take my time and both find a place I really like and the right place will not have a problem with my credit history or lack thereof.

The view of life and the universe that I have tells me that it will work in the right time and place. Worrying and fretting about it is not going to make it any better. Situations like this are not actually tests per se, but little dramas that make the universe an interesting place for the soul to visit. From our little localized perspective, it can seem pretty $%!&ed-up but if we open up to a wider view, it becomes a fairly fun experience if we will let it.