I recently made the switch to self-employment (and am loving it). The only downside I'm now noticing to that is that we are considering moving sometime next year (it's the type of job I can take with me without losing income) and not having long documentation of work history might make it hard to buy a house. The job I had before didn't pay enough for me to afford a mortgage anyway so that was kind of a catch 22.
Anyway, I am wondering in this case if it is worth getting my credit scores as high as I can or if it will even get that far without documented work history?
Worst case scenario, I think my father will be willing to cosign for me because he knows I'm not going to miss a payment - but for obvious reasons I would like to avoid having to do that if it is at all possible.
Will having a bigger downpayment help? A really high credit score? Any other ways to overcome the lack of established work history?
I'm wondering too if incorporating would help rather than simply being a self-employed sole proprietor. This may not be the best place to ask that, but someone here might know?
I don't know my actual scores at this point, but I just go my 3 free annual reports and they all show that I've never gone over my limits or missed a single payment. I'm only 23, so my oldest account is just under 4 years old but it has always been in positive standing along with my other credit card and store card accounts.
I have only ever had revolving credit, never any loans. Never owned a house, paid for my 1st car in full several years ago and have been driving the same car since (I love my Honda!).
Right now, I am at just under 30% utilisation so I know that is one obvious way to get my credit score up and shouldn't be an issue in the next couple of months. To be honest I'm not sure what else I can do that will get the score up since I don't have any missed payments.
The only other thing I can think of is the only negative that showed up on my reports (and only showed in the Experian report). That is a civil claim that I paid 2.5 years ago. Again, it was paid in full and the report shows it being paid less than two weeks after the claim was filed. Is there any way to knock that off to help my score or is that just there until it falls off in 4.5 more years?
I'm assuming adding any other kind of accounts at this point is probably going to do more damage than good by lowering my AAoA and showing a very recent account.
Is there anything else I can do to boost my score as much as possible in the next 3-6 months?
Sorry, I know there are a lot of different questions packed in there, but I've been processing through alot of information recently and am hoping you guys can at least help me with some of these thoughts.
