4 ms·

+1 To explain cultural difference: - In the US you are considered financially stable if you are always paying your debt/credit on time. - In the germanic cou

+1 To explain cultural difference: - In the US you are considered financially stable if you are always paying your debt/credit on time. - In the germanic countries you are considered financially stable if you have none. My US Bank clerk needed a few meetings to convince me that it is good to build go into monthly credits (creditcard) to support my credit score.

wil421 10y ago
I wouldn't go as far as saying always. The banks want a history of loan payments. I'm 30 and just got my first installment loan for a car. Getting a home loan is difficult. I don't have any bad credit at all but not much installment loan history.
darkhorn 10y ago
>My US Bank clerk needed a few meetings to convince me that it is good to build go into monthly credits (creditcard) to support my credit score. Uhmm, can't a bank see your salaries? Because in Turkey they want to see your salaries. You enter to www.turkiye.gov.tr and print out your last 12 months salaries with a validation number and then hand it to your bank. Or you ask from your employer, he ask it from Social Security, travels back to you and you hand it to your bank. Then they check wheter you had missed to pay back your credit (even to another bank, because they share data). And they check wheter if you were rejected by an another bank (because they share data). Basically, your score is high if your salary is high.
- acchow 10y ago
  The US system is kind of broken. They don't equate high salary with high creditworthiness - maybe it's because of the american culture of consumerism (which implies that you might make lots of money, but if you spend it all and are going into debt to fund your lavish lifestyle, then you're not creditworthy). So the American system rates creditworthiness by a history of paying off debt on time (usually credit cards, mortgage, car loan, etc.). It's stupid. It would obviously be better if we judged creditworthiness by your bank balance history. But this is apparently hard/impossible to show.
  - SilasX 10y ago
    Right. Their models are "trained" on people who have credit card debt. No history of using a credit card? "Ugh, weirdo, don't bother, send them to subprime." Happened to me too -- I was working at my first job for 18 months but had never gotten a credit card. I had never had debts and was asking for a mortgage less than 2x my salary while making 3x the median income for the area and at its largest employer; still classified as subprime. What's worse is that I could go to the annual credit report services and get my score, which would show it as 740, but then any actual lender I went to wouldn't see the 740; they'd see "no data", which puts you in the subprime bucket. I would be auto-rejected even for $500-limit store credit cards. (It's been since resolved and I've had a credit card for a while but still, very screwy.)
bassman9000 10y ago
This. One of my greatest shocks when moving to the US: debt is part of your life. You need debt in order to build credit history, which will get you better rates... next time you need debt. I get warnings for not having more credit cards.

wil421 10y ago

I wouldn't go as far as saying always. The banks want a history of loan payments. I'm 30 and just got my first installment loan for a car. Getting a home loan is difficult. I don't have any bad credit at all but not much installment loan history.

darkhorn 10y ago

>My US Bank clerk needed a few meetings to convince me that it is good to build go into monthly credits (creditcard) to support my credit score. Uhmm, can't a bank see your salaries? Because in Turkey they want to see your salaries. You enter to www.turkiye.gov.tr and print out your last 12 months salaries with a validation number and then hand it to your bank. Or you ask from your employer, he ask it from Social Security, travels back to you and you hand it to your bank. Then they check wheter you had missed to pay back your credit (even to another bank, because they share data). And they check wheter if you were rejected by an another bank (because they share data). Basically, your score is high if your salary is high.

acchow 10y ago
The US system is kind of broken. They don't equate high salary with high creditworthiness - maybe it's because of the american culture of consumerism (which implies that you might make lots of money, but if you spend it all and are going into debt to fund your lavish lifestyle, then you're not creditworthy). So the American system rates creditworthiness by a history of paying off debt on time (usually credit cards, mortgage, car loan, etc.). It's stupid. It would obviously be better if we judged creditworthiness by your bank balance history. But this is apparently hard/impossible to show.
- SilasX 10y ago
  Right. Their models are "trained" on people who have credit card debt. No history of using a credit card? "Ugh, weirdo, don't bother, send them to subprime." Happened to me too -- I was working at my first job for 18 months but had never gotten a credit card. I had never had debts and was asking for a mortgage less than 2x my salary while making 3x the median income for the area and at its largest employer; still classified as subprime. What's worse is that I could go to the annual credit report services and get my score, which would show it as 740, but then any actual lender I went to wouldn't see the 740; they'd see "no data", which puts you in the subprime bucket. I would be auto-rejected even for $500-limit store credit cards. (It's been since resolved and I've had a credit card for a while but still, very screwy.)

bassman9000 10y ago

This. One of my greatest shocks when moving to the US: debt is part of your life. You need debt in order to build credit history, which will get you better rates... next time you need debt. I get warnings for not having more credit cards.