Starting a credit file from nothing

Arriving with no credit file is not the same as arriving with good credit from home. To an American lender you do not exist, and that affects renting, phone contracts, insurance and eventually a mortgage.

How to start

A secured credit card is the usual route. You deposit an amount and that becomes your limit, so the bank is risking nothing and will approve you with no history. Use it for something small every month and pay it in full.

Some banks offer a credit builder account, where you pay into a locked savings account and the payments are reported as credit. This works too and costs less.

What not to do

Do not apply to several lenders at once hoping one says yes. Each application marks your file, and a new file with five applications on it looks worse than an empty one.

Do not carry a balance thinking it builds credit faster. It does not, and the interest is high enough to matter.

How long

Six months of small payments made on time gets you a score. Two years gets you a useful one. There is no way to make this faster, and anybody offering one is selling something.

The official page for this Ours explains it. Theirs is the authority, and it is the one that changes.

Nobody has recorded when this was last checked.

Not legal, immigration, tax or medical advice. This is what people who have done it wish somebody had told them.