I'll be moving over to the US (on H1b visa) and living with my US girlfriend who has a good credit record. I'd like to apply for credit/ store cards jointly with her.
1. Will the credit companies allow me to do this?
2. Since she has a good credit record will it help us to get joint approval?
3. Will this help me establish a credit record?
4. I'm buying a house with cash. Will this help boost my credit record?

Some will, some won't.


By "joint approval", do you mean you getting your name on her accounts? If they allow it, it'll happen regardless of her credit score.


As long as you have a SSN, yes.


No. The way to boost your credit rating is to get your name on the mortgage and pay down the mortgage on time each month. If you buy the house with cash, you have no opportunity to let the creditors evaluate your payment history over time.

Ian

I don't believe piggybacking credit scores works anymore. You will be assessed on your own credit history when applying for a card.

Log on to experian.co.uk print off your UK credit history (cancel repeating charge afterwards) and use this as extra evidence to give a bank in lieu of your lack of US credit history.

I don't know whether this still works or not. I got a letter of good standing from LLoyds when I came over and sent in with any credit apps.. seemed to work.

I am told that Capital one is big in UK as well as here and my mate switched his UK account to US when he came last year..(but you will still need SSN for them to report to credit agencies)...this maybe a way to go.

With respect, I disagree. I moved up to CA last year and using my brother in law's credit helped me tremendously - not credit card per se.

I applied for an Auto Loan AND rental lease both were declined. Well the lease was not declined but they were asking for 3.5k deposit!!

As soon as we applied together, both my lease and auto loan were approved. Auto loan got lowest possible rate wtih the credit union....

Piggybacking as I meant it is slightly different, it's when you just add an authorized user onto an existing account. It used to be you would automatically sort of inherit a great score due to the other person already on the account. Now I think the rules are a little tighter.

Ah ok.

OP originally asked "joint application" which definitely will help OP...

Thanks for replies. I did mean a joint application, not piggyback.

We emigrated to Florida last year and your previous UK credit rating goes out of the window. It does not follow you to the US which is a real pain.

We were even turned down for a Walmart store card, because once you emigrate into the US your credit rating goes to zero!

We do now have a US credit card but its not easy to get.

Credit Unions are a great place to start.

+1

Autoloan with credit union and will continue to do business with em

I think I've read somewhere about doing a loan with an credit union backed by savings held in an account with them, to get around the lack of credit score. Make at least six months of payments on time, and then close the loan using the savings account. That, apparently, gets you started on the credit score trail.

I'll look into it more, but that's what I'll probably be doing for a car or motorbike.

On that note, BoA or WF will give you secured credit cards. Put 500 as a deposit and they will give you a credit card with 500 limit. Of course you can have higher limit if you put higher amount down.

Those ideas sound good. Sounds like I could put the cash I was going to use for a car into a Credit Union deposit account and get a loan from them for the car?
I already have a BoA account so I could deposit some money in a savings account with BoA and get a credit card with them. That gives me 2 accounts to help with my credit record?
If you get a credit card and pay it off in full every month does that help improve your credit record? or do they like you to pay only part off each month?

Can you get a credit card through a credit union?
We finally got ours through Capital One.

We bought everything when we first emigrated to Florida but it would have been nice in the early days to have had a credit card for the odd item her and there.