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P1 · 04-06-2015, 08:51 AM

I can speak to this as I've gone through this... twice. First time I moved here was with my parents. Second time was after I got married, and I had a green card. This is a little known fact, but your credit is completely wiped when you receive your green card and you start from scratch. No good credit, no bad credit. This is about as bad as it gets, but you'll be in the same position. I went in to buy a car, just like you will, and ended up having to pay cash for it. I could not even qualify for the smallest loan they had, which was a few thousand dollars.

The frustrating thing is that you'll have to put down deposits everywhere since you don't have credit, so make sure you can cover that. Best way to start building credit, or at least how I did it, was become a member of an American bank (take your pick) and open up a credit card where, again, you have to put down a certain amount of money in order to secure a credit line. So in other words, they would give you a credit card with a $500 limit but you'd have to put $500 down to secure it. Annoying, again, but start using that credit card responsibly and eventually they will give back the $500 deposit and increase your spending limit. Make sure that whatever your spending limit is, that you only even get to half of that balance. So if your spending limit is $5,000, just make sure you keep the balance to $2,500 or below.

Then start finding other places where you can easily obtain finance. Yes, be the guy that gets a petrol (gas) card at Shell. Buy a TV from Best Buy and finance it. Go to Aaron's Rent's and finance a couch. It's all idiotic and annoying, but there's really no other way around it. Good credit in this country will end up saving you a lot of money on loans etc. in the long term.

I also found out that, when buying a car, some companies are more lenient than others. For example, if you were to buy an Audi, Audi Financing takes into account that a lot of their customers are foreign and might not have credit. Of course they will want to see your bank balance and your historic wages from the past one or two years, but you get where I'm going.

04-06-2015, 08:51 AM	#8
P1 Lieutenant General 11583 Rep 11,144 Posts Drives: 2004 3/4 ton Duramax Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: United States iTrader: (1)	I can speak to this as I've gone through this... twice. First time I moved here was with my parents. Second time was after I got married, and I had a green card. This is a little known fact, but your credit is completely wiped when you receive your green card and you start from scratch. No good credit, no bad credit. This is about as bad as it gets, but you'll be in the same position. I went in to buy a car, just like you will, and ended up having to pay cash for it. I could not even qualify for the smallest loan they had, which was a few thousand dollars. The frustrating thing is that you'll have to put down deposits everywhere since you don't have credit, so make sure you can cover that. Best way to start building credit, or at least how I did it, was become a member of an American bank (take your pick) and open up a credit card where, again, you have to put down a certain amount of money in order to secure a credit line. So in other words, they would give you a credit card with a $500 limit but you'd have to put $500 down to secure it. Annoying, again, but start using that credit card responsibly and eventually they will give back the $500 deposit and increase your spending limit. Make sure that whatever your spending limit is, that you only even get to half of that balance. So if your spending limit is $5,000, just make sure you keep the balance to $2,500 or below. Then start finding other places where you can easily obtain finance. Yes, be the guy that gets a petrol (gas) card at Shell. Buy a TV from Best Buy and finance it. Go to Aaron's Rent's and finance a couch. It's all idiotic and annoying, but there's really no other way around it. Good credit in this country will end up saving you a lot of money on loans etc. in the long term. I also found out that, when buying a car, some companies are more lenient than others. For example, if you were to buy an Audi, Audi Financing takes into account that a lot of their customers are foreign and might not have credit. Of course they will want to see your bank balance and your historic wages from the past one or two years, but you get where I'm going.
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