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Perhaps 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,
by potatolicious 14y ago
Perhaps 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.
- lifeguard 14y agoBK, foreclosure of a home loan, and repossession of a car from a loan leave flags on one's credit file that are very different from no credit or even bad credit. If a person with no credit history in the USA (like a naturalized alien) is added as an authorized user to an existing credit account the credit history of this account is 'cloned' to the new addition.