I have the feeling this will be a pivotal year. Just lately I’ve had a really hard time with the fact that we had to move away from Massachusetts and back to Illinois, but I am starting to feel better. I felt bad because I felt like I was giving up the first thing I truly loved and (by extension) my job. I worked in Mass at the iRacing.com office, that office contained people like Dave Kaemmer who wrote Indy 500, the game I played at Kieron Ashley-Smith’s house (on his PC) when I was 16 between our end-of-school exams (when I should have been revising). I played those racing games and simulations religiously, for years, and even developed a successful Web site (which I since left, and which has since I left shut down); The same Web site John Henry (the Boston Red Sox owner) discovered me from and hired me to work with iRacing. Simracing in some form has essentially been my life for 20 years, or more.

I still work with iRacing.com, but not being in the office is a pretty big blow. It really means I can never advance in my career and it can be pretty lonely and demoralizing at times working from home (bring on the cabin-fever!) I also risk the fact that it could easily be ‘too difficult’ to work with someone out of the office and I guess my only real solace there is that I really am kind of my own department! There’s things I do that if I wasn’t there would probably stop unless someone could figure out how to automate them and there’s things I do that I don’t really feel any other single person could do all of… There’s probably even a few regular duties (things I have to do every day) which I doubt nobody even knows about, and the amount of Private Messages, emails to my personal addresses and even messages on Facebook that I get which are purely about iRacing means I am fairly well entwined with the company – in the eyes of our customers. Saying that, I can’t help but feel like it’ll end at some point and I’ll have to find something else (hence the bulk of the sadness about the move). On-top of that, I got to know a couple of people in the office that I really, really like as friends and I miss them quite a bit. There were obviously a lot of guys around and it was a typical male atmosphere with the typical laughs and jokes we all enjoy.

Sheila has been talking a lot about having children just lately, too, and while I want to have children with her I am worried about her schooling. I think that with a child, she’ll give up school. I know she doesn’t think that, but I think it’ll be too much for her to look after a child, work and study. She is a straight-A student at the moment with a 4.0 GPA and I don’t want her to lose what she wants, she’ll probably regret it.

A really positive thing just lately is that as of April, 2009 I have been establishing credit! I got a Social Security card when I became a legal resident here in the United States and it took a year for me to be able to get going… I think as an adult it’s incredibly difficult to get that first rung, especially in such a deep economic downturn. Back in 2008 I attempted to get a secured Credit Card – and was denied. I was denied because the idiot at Bank of America put the card for $400 when I asked for a $300 one. I kept $300 in my savings account for them to use and guess what? They couldn’t find the $400 they were looking for… We then moved to Massachusetts and of course that screwed everything up: Everything I tried to get my Credit Rating building failed because they couldn’t establish that I was me! I tried to use Bank of America’s Privacy Assist, only to find that the bumbling idiot on the phone didn’t know how to do his job either and couldn’t let me access my own credit file…

I ended up opening a Eufora Pre-paid Card, which said that it reported to credit. They take a monthly payment of $6.65, so I just loaded the account up with enough money for a year and forgot about it! When we moved back to Illinois at the end of 2009 I contacted Privacy Assist, spoke to a woman with brains who confirmed my identity and found that both Eufora and another credit line I had been attached to had both been reporting – and my credit rating was no longer ZERO! Woohoo!

That is actually pretty big for me… It was nice to see great gains on my rating within a year. This means that going for a house of some sort doesn’t have to be too far in our future…

So, kids, houses and the job thing… I told you it was going to be pivotal.

Being given this opportunity to start from scratch, it was a bit daunting. I don’t want to do anything wrong and delay buying a house in a few years and I don’t want to accept credit I don’t need, or risk just screwing things up.

As soon as I knew I’d be getting a Social Security number (SSN), I started trying to find out how to build credit from scratch, as an adult, but found no advice on how to do this at all!

So, let me tell you what I have found out, because who knows, it might help somebody!

First, open a bank account. This is the first step for Credit Building and really needs to always be the first piece of information shown. It shows you have some kind of income (otherwise, you wouldn’t need a bank account).

Second, consider opening a Secure Credit Card account. Normally, a secure credit card is done by giving a bank a minimum deposit of around $300, they hold this money in a Savings Account and give you a Credit Card with a Credit Limit matching whatever you have in the Savings Account. The Secure Credit card shows on your Credit Record as a normal credit card. You should ALWAYS pay at least the minimum monthly payment, but should try at all times to pay the whole balance. NEVER pay late on anything.

If you need additional help with your Credit Rating, consider opening a second secure credit card.

The best way to use your Secure Credit Card (or any Credit Card) is for something like bills or groceries. Make sure you have the cash for the bills of groceries anyway and put the money aside so you can pay full balance. The nice thing is, your $300 is in a savings account, gaining interest!