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Not only is it bad, a BK on your file means you will have to use 'special' finance to get a car loan and it will be impossible to find a bank to underwrite a su
by lifeguard 14y ago
Not only is it bad, a BK on your file means you will have to use 'special' finance to get a car loan and it will be impossible to find a bank to underwrite a sub-prime loan for a house (for seven years). You would also have to pay a higher rent security deposit on an apartment.
- philwelch 14y agoIf you lose badly enough at credit that you end up declaring bankruptcy, maybe homeownership or car loans aren't for you. Just a thought.
- marvin 14y agoCould be. But there are some unlucky people in there as well - single parents who bought a house at the peak of the housing bubble because they were afraid that home prices would keep rising and leave them without a place to live. And then promptly lost their job in the recession.
- yummyfajitas 14y agoReal estate speculators who made highly leveraged bets that went bad are in fact the sort of people who should, perhaps, not get the opportunity to repeat their mistakes.
- eru 14y agoWhat about renting?
- mkr-hn 14y agohttp://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4763091 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4763091
- eru 14y agoThanks. I never lived in the US. I came to Britain (from Germany) with neither car nor credit history. They let me rent a place, and I never had to buy a car. (Oh, and didn't have to worry about health insurance, either. But that's a slightly different topic.) I wonder how my move to Singapore will play out. But should I ever come to the US, I'll make sure I have plenty of money.
- mkr-hn 14y agoI've heard the US a great country to live in if you have plenty of money. It's so-so if you don't.
- tsotha 14y agoWhere isn't that true?
- mkr-hn 14y agoThis is the only place I have enough perspective on to say anything about.
- lifeguard 14y agoIf you know how to hustle in the vernacular sense you can come to the USA penniless and retire wealthy. The USA is a great place if you want/need the rule of law to protect property. Overall, the US civil legal system is not corrupt. In many places in Asia and E. Europe corruption is systemic. It is much more difficult to keep a successful business in such an environment. One example is real estate escrow services with title insurance.
- mkr-hn 14y agoAre you living in a different US? I'm not saying the path to wealth is beyond my horizon, but there's a lot in the way that only exists because previous generations managed things poorly. Someone starting a little further behind would have an exponentially harder time.
- lifeguard 14y agoIronic you are saying this on an entrepreneurial forum Phil. As I mentioned elsewhere, Donald Trump has filed been through bankruptcy more than once.
- hnal943 14y agoBeing and entrepeneur does not require you to approve the actions of other entrepenuers. Surely you can be an entrepeneur and have higher moral standards than Donald Trump.
- lifeguard 14y agoI mean BK is often used as intended by entrepreneurs so they can move on to new projects. I see your point that a useful thing can be abused.
- potatolicious 14y agoPerhaps not home ownership - but in many (most?) parts of this country a reliable vehicle is an absolute requirement for holding down a job. A bankrupt person, if anything, is in greatest need of a trustworthy car, and is also the most likely to require a loan to do so. There's also the notion of rent - people who've always had good credit don't really know how different renting is like for people who have bad credit. I came to this country a few years ago with zero US credit rating, and even with a high salary, offer letters, etc, had one hell of a time finding a place to live. Many landlords simply will not consider you, while others charge exorbitant deposits to cover the risk. The recently bankrupt are also the least able to afford a security deposit several times higher than what everyone else pays. The reality of credit in the US is that your life gets exponentially harder as your credit worsens, and the difficulty in turning that ship around increases dramatically. People who've never had to suffer from bad/no credit really need to examine this before clucking judgmentally.
- philwelch 14y agoUsed cars are widely available for relatively low prices.
- potatolicious 14y agoLow to a fiscally solvent person. Even a couple thousand dollars is loan-worthy amounts to someone fresh out of a bankruptcy. Pawn shops and payday loan shops, after all, are a testament to the poor's need for small loans.
- smsm42 14y agoI came into US with no credit too, and had absolutely no problem to rent. Actually, I had much more problem finding lenders willing to accept my pets than my credit (for some reason, most of the local apartments hate pets, no matter how small and harmless). Yes, they asked for security deposits (not exorbitant - 1-2 months, and many require it even with good credit), and yes, car loan I got was outrageously expensive compared to what I could've gotten with good credit - but I still could buy anything I needed. I guess maybe in the Silicon Valley everybody is used to immigrants so nobody is surprised when the person with no credit shows up, especially if they have the actual money. If you have no money that's different, but then the primary problem is not credit.
- MaysonL 14y agoOr perhaps if you get sick and have horrendously high medical bills that your insurance decides not to cover because you failed to report a hangnail on your application (or got fired from a job and then got screwed by a pre-existing condition). Just a thought.