My FICO was over 750 when I bought my house, and I had never paid any interest.

I bought a house with no credit score.

LoL, a lot of loans are good financial decisions

A lot of state laws make driving suck until they're 18 or 21, I can't remember the age. My coworkers kid is 16, has his license, and can't have anyone in the car unless one of his parents is in the car, or something stupid like that.

1. Obtain land.  Make certain you do this first (HAVE YOUR NAME ON THE DEED).  Getting a verbal agreement with a relative for them to sell you the land after you get the house built and your finances recover from the strain of building the house, so you can spend your money on getting the house built and move in, is an easy way to lose the house.  Of course, learning that expensive lesson the hard way comes with a silver lining of not having a mortgage to pay off on the house you just lost, because the bank wasn't going to give you a mortgage to build a house on land you don't own.  Once you have learned this lesson, or skipped it and went straight to obtaining land first, look for a bargain that you pay for without taking out a loan.  In my case, I managed a mixture of cash and barter (built a barn for the seller) to buy land that the seller had bought decades earlier to build a house on, never got around to building a house, then decided they were getting too old to start building a house, so they had some land that was mainly a tax liability for them.

2. Decide what you NEED in a house.  If there are only going to be two people living in it, it doesn't need five bedrooms and four bathrooms.  Two people can easily live in a house that is just under 1,000 square feet.  They may have to limit their hobbies a bit until a detached garage or hobby shed can be built at some point in the future, but that is fine, since that means the hobby budget can be applied to the house construction for a while.

3. Prep the site.  Don't go paying some contractor to do this, because he likely has a family to support and will need to make enough money off you to support that family for at least a little while.  A shovel and axe don't require a user's manual and are cheap to buy.  Get to work.  If you think your time is too valuable, buy a chainsaw and rent some of the smaller equipment to move dirt on a weekend.

4. Put in a foundation.  Again, contractors have families to support.  If you have relatives or good friends living nearby, you may be able to get some 'free' labor at the expense of some beer and burgers (just don't get too crazy with the beer, or there's no telling what the foundation will look like).

5. Build the house on the foundation.  This gets a bit tricky, as you want to get a roof on it as soon as possible, so you don't have to worry about tarps blowing off in a storm and everything getting wet.  Crews throwing up houses in a new subdivision are doing it quick enough that they aren't going to be worrying about this as much as you are, since you will be building at a much slower pace, buying materials when you can afford them, and working on the house when you have the time.  Plumbing and wiring can also be problematic, especially if you live in an area where the permit office gets bent out of shape over such things.  You may have to hire someone to do the wiring and plumbing, if you don't happen to have those professions among your relatives or friends that can be bribed with beer and burgers.

6. Move into your new house.

I cheated and maxed out two credit cards buying materials toward the end, because I needed to get done and move into it.  The credit cards were paid off within a year of moving in.

Attached File