How could I find someone to find a room for me to live in? (For a fee, of course.)
Many colleges have offices that can help students find off campus housing. They will have information about rooms being let by families, and about houses being shared by groups of students. The biggest issue is that many of the best places were filled months ago. With only a month to go before classes start time is tight. You can also look for electronic listings organized through a campus newspaper.  The advantage of going through university resources is that they will have more information regarding the types of students they are looking for. A house full of undergrads is different than a family house that rents only to young professors. "There are services, usually associated with real estate agents, that provide apartment search services for relocating professionals. I was very underimpressed when I was offered the use of such a service and did better on my own, but I did have the company paying for a hotel room while I searched so I had time to investigate alternative channels -- and in fact found and took a place being offered by a co-worker's father. But if you're really looking for ""a room"" in a shared living situation, and you aren't already on campus talking to other students, I agree that the school's housing office, or the dorms and/or fraternity houses and/or independent living groups are your best bet.  In a college town most roommate openings get snapped up pretty quickly and are more likely to go to someone who is a known or vouched-for quantity."
I just wanted to let people know of a strange little way bankruptcy works in society when dealing with individuals and when dealing with businesses.  If I as a person declare bankruptcy, my credit score goes downhill. I find loans have higher interest rates, some people won't lend the amounts I want, and I have to pay more up front.  If as a business I declare bankruptcy, my individual credit score (not business) does not suffer AT ALL. My business likely will have a harder time getting loans, that is unless someone buys me out or I collapse the business and start a new business, maybe even the exact same business with the same clients. I personally, am not held accountable for anything (unless I was a sole proprietor of course and didn't incorporate).  That to me, is the major problem. Corporations mean never having to say you're sorry. No matter how high up you are, you are never individually accountable for your actions.  In fact, I highly suggest anyone considering bankruptcy simply form a corporation, dump their debt assets into it, and then have the corporation declare bankruptcy.  Viola, instant clean credit score and all your debts are paid.  Just watch out for [vicarious liability :p](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicarious_liability) Transferwise gives an excellent exchange rate and very minimal costs. They save on costs by not actually changing any money; your money goes to someone else in the US, and the Canadia dollars you want come from someone else in Canada. No money changes currency or crosses borders, there is no bank transfer fee (assuming that domestic bank transfers, inside the country, are free), and they give an excellent exchange rate (very nearly the spot rate, I find; far better than many rates I find online for sending money across the border).  I sent money from the UK to Japan with it last week, at a fixed fee of about three US dollars (I was charged in GBP, obviously). About one tenth the cost of an international bank transfer. I just double-checked; at about midday on the fifth of October 2016, they gave me a rate of 130.15 JPY per 1 GBP, and then charged me two GBP to transfer the money. The rate that day, according to xe.com, varied between 130.7 and 132 ; basically, I don't think I could have got a better deal pretty much anywhere. As I type, this very second, they offer 1.33 CAD for 1 USD , and google tells me that this very second, the exchange rate is 1.33 CAD for 1 USD - transferwise is giving the spot price. I don't think you'll get a better rate anywhere else. The basic problem here is that you need to have money to invest before you can make a profit from it.  Now if you have say $500K or more, you can put that in mutual funds and live modestly off the profits.  If you don't have that $500K to start out with, you're either looking at a long time frame to accumulate it - say by working a job for 30+ years, and contributing the max to your 401k - or are playing the market trying to get it.  The last is essentially gambling (though with somewhat better odds than casinos or horse racing), and puts you up against the Gambler's Ruin problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler's_ruin You also, I think, have a very mistaken idea about the a typical investor's lifestyle.  Take for instance the best known one, Warren Buffet.  No offence to him, but from everything I've read he lives a pretty boring life.  Spends all day reading financial reports, and what sort of life is that? As for flying places being exciting, ever tried it?  I have (with scientific conferences, but I expect boardrooms are much the same), and it is boring.  Flying at 30,000 ft is boring, and if it's a commercial flight, unpleasant as well.  A conference room in London, Paris, or Milan is EXACTLY the same as a conference room in Podunk, Iowa.  Even the cities outside the conference rooms are much of a muchness these days: you can eat at McDonalds in Paris or Shanghai.  Only way to find interest is to take time from your work to get outside the conference rooms & commercial districts, and then you're losing money. I'm all-in on hard silver, a small portion is stored at my house for emergency expenditures and the vast majority is in a high-security vault in Canada. That was actually the cheapest place I could find for long-term storage and insurance, which happened to be off-shore. It could turn out to be beneficial to be off-shore though. In the 1930s gold became illegal to privately own its very possible they could do the same this time, although they didn't in 1979. Oil is too high in volume to reasonably store. Gold isn't as undervalued as silver, which I could spend a full day talking about. But to sum it up in a few points: there is less silver than there is gold, gold has a premium for jewelry which will likely go down in a crash even though you will still see gains, silver is the second most used commodity besides oil, less people are in the know about it, silver prices were actually higher than gold a few times in the past century, simply measuring the dow in silver will show it's further below the historical average compared to gold. I'll stop there, but I could go on though on silver if people want. Real-estate is still very expensive from the 2008 recession, traditionally mortgages are $1.05 per dollar you would spend on renting the same property. Currently real-estate is at like $1.25+ I believe, It peaked at about $1.95. I rent, to save money, which you can spend on other assets.  If one's willing to move to another state for lower taxes, they definitely should. Employment is going to be harder to come by, and they should get as much out of it as possible as they can. If they don't save enough, they could end up just using their entire savings during the whole thing if they can't find a job, in which case at the end you'd never know they knew it was going to happen.  Overall I don't think this crash is going to be like the great depression. I don't feel compelled to store food and buy a generator or anything. I believe the living will be *easier* than it were to live in the 90s for those who are invested in assets. Everything is going to be on sale, meanwhile their wealth will be increasing. Depending on how much they own it could be increasing faster than they need to spend it. Sounds like the life to me. But with that said those without real assets, especially the lower class, will be unemployed and living on food stamps. Perhaps even the food stamps making more people leave the dollar and the economy. This actually might not be a prediction and is what happening already. But I don't believe anybody, in america at least, will be starving. In the 30s we had not mastered industry farming yet and we had the *dustbowl* to make things worse.   Crime though, I'd own a gun. The protesters are here already, and I think we are just passing the half-way point right now, they will get angrier.  I don't know enough about taxes to know the best country or place to store to combat taxes. Maybe someone else can chime in. I'm in canada to avoid high insurance and storage fees.  And for careful selection of primary residence, In the long haul I'd rent a small apartment, as small and cheap as possible. In a safe neighborhood, but not so much secluded that a single grocery store or gas station going out of business could ruin it. "Actually sounds like an interesting concept for a business, potentially! (grin) You know, depending on where you live and how big the market is, you might see if there's a local ""concierge"" service.  These are companies that will act like personal shoppers/assistants for you in all kinds of ways.  I can't speak to the quality of their services or the pricing they use, but it would be a great place to start. I'm sure you can find listings of them on the web." "While the other people have tried to answer your question as thoroughly as possible, I fear they are entirely incorrect in answering your question itself as it stands. The answer is that there are no usual terms. There are a handful of different options coming out now for this exact scheme. Examples include the UK Governments ""Help To Buy"" scheme. Accomodation is offered at a normal rate, and a small portion of the rent is set aside each month. At the end of a fixed period, that money becomes a deposit which the letter hands over to a mortgage provider who accepts it as a deposit. This might well be a terminology thing, since the other scenario which people described falls into the same name you've used. That scenario is where the investor who owns the property is considering sale of the property, and is happy to negotiate a price up front for the next year. Usually the rent and price is higher than the market rate because if the market goes well over the next year they could end up out of pocket. Putting that into perspective, over that year they are gaining their $1,000 a month or so, but having $100,000 invested means a return of 12%. If the property value is over $250,000 which I believe to be more likely, they are achieving a return of (I think) 4.8%. That's not a bad rate, by any means, but realistically they are losing a bit more for maintenance, and they could be making more from their money. If the market were to go up in that time by more than 4.8% (my house, for instance, increased in value by over 15% in the last 12 months), they are making a substantial loss since you are getting a house at 15% below the market rate. The total works out to a 10.2% loss for them. Note that I don't know the US housing market at all, I'm speaking mostly from my experience of the market here in the UK. This is what I hear, what I see, and what I've played. To summarise a bit: Make sure you check your terms before signing anything." "If it is true that for the same price, you could get a better place (or that for a lower price you could get an equivalent place), you should do some soul-searching to decide what monetary value you would place on the hassle of moving to such an alternative.  You should then negotiate aggressively for a rent that is no more than the rent of the alternative place plus your hassle costs, and if the landlord does not meet your price, you should refuse to renew your lease, and instead move out to an alternative.  (Of course, you might also want to double-check your research to ensure you really can get such a good alternative, and that your new landlords won't try a similar bait-and-switch and force you to move again in a year.) Barring local ordinances such as rent control laws, I don't think it's worth it to worry about whether the increase is ""normal"".  If you can get a better deal somewhere else, then what your landlords are asking is too much.  If you have a good relationship with them on a personal level you may be able to tell them this in a nice way and thus get them to make a more reasonable offer.  Otherwise, the landlords will learn that their expectations are unreasonable when all their tenants move out to cheaper places." I think the mortgage must not be in the equation at all in order to determine how much to charge. Of course you want to cover your mortgage but the renting price is determined only by how much the renter is willing to pay (offer and demand) and not your mortgage (some people don't even have a mortgage). In other words I think you should be charging a price based on similar rented houses.