Many people are at a crossroads in their careers and due to the proliferation and ease of the internet, many choose to set up a home office. Overheads can be low and lifestyle choices can also come into play as you can combine childcare at the same time, or look after elderly relatives. However, many people often find themselves in the situation of having bad credit due to their previous spending history. Unfortunately, it is a fact of life that if you have been unable to pay your bills in the past, many traditional lenders will look upon your history unfavorably and will not extend you credit.
All is not lost, though, as we will now take a look at various other means of funding your home office when you have bad credit.
Savings, Friends, and Family
When funding your home office capital is needed for many things, from buying that first computer to advertising your sales. If you are in a bad debt situation traditional lenders may not extend this capital so a good place to start is with those closest to you.
Do you have a personal pension that you can unlock a portion of to buy that new Macbook? Can you tap into the bank of mum and dad, for a low-interest rate loan to get you up and running? Do you have a successful entrepreneur friend who might see the potential of your business and who wants to invest? All of these ways are often staring you in the face, yet they could be a perfect method of funding your home office.
Social Lending and Crowdfunding
Since the internet came to prominence numerous social lending and crowdfunding sites have sprung up. These will often extend unsecured working capital loans that can be used to fund your home office. Essentially, people on these sites borrow and lend from each other, and because you can sell your story or business idea to them directly, you have a much higher chance of securing capital. Furthermore, the interest rates on offer tend to be much more competitive than traditional lenders such as banks.
Microcredit organizations are also an option as these have been set up to specifically lend to people that the banks will not extend credit to.
Specialist Firms
Sadly, in this day and age, you will not be the only person burdened with a bad credit history, that finds it difficult to secure funding to set up their own office or business and pay for the essential equipment such as furniture, telephony, and computers that are needed. However, if you speak to professionals at CataloguesForBadCredit.co.uk, one can find catalog companies specially designed for people who have a poor credit history who need to secure funding for their home office. These often give payment options that are tailored for business start-ups, so you can spread the initial cost over a period of time.
Improving your Credit Score
Perhaps you thought that it would be impossible to try and improve or change your credit score? Well, you’d be wrong. You could restructure your existing unsecured debts such as credit cards and personal loans and consolidate them into one manageable monthly payment. This will improve your credit rating which in turn could allow you to access funding, but at the least will allow you to free up potential working capital.
Factoring
Maybe you are already at the point where you are invoicing customers, but they are requesting long payment terms to the point that you have no income to pay your own suppliers. Again, all is not lost. There are numerous factoring companies that will assess your receivables and pay you out immediately even if you have 90-day terms. Of course, they will take a charge for this, but you can factor this into your pricing, and immediately your business will become better funded.
As we have seen, setting up your own office when you have a bad credit rating is no walk in the park. There are numerous ways of going about it, but put simply it needs some lateral thinking as there are a surprising number of options open to you from borrowing from your nearest and dearest to crowdfunding your start-up costs. There are specialist catalog firms who can provide all of your startup needs, and if you are having issues with receivables these can be factored to release cash flow.
It may be daunting, but with a ‘think outside the box mentality’ credit can usually be secured to fund that dream home office.