Posts Tagged ‘credit card’

This is a topic I wanted to write about for a long time. Because money was one of the things we worried about a lot. Not really about, if we had enough to move to the US. More about what will cost how much, how much money we should bring for the beginning and so on. So I’ll be really straight forward with this post and make a honest list of how much money we spent so far. But before I start I want to say that we brought $10.000 in cash with us and had opened a bank account with the Deutsche Bank in Germany, which cooperates with the Bank Of America to make money transfers from Germany easier.

1. Bank stuff: This is a fact you shouldn’t underestimate. Because in the US you can mostly only function with a Credit Card. But: You won’t get one without a credit history (long story you should better read about seperately). So to get Secured Credit Cards (which are like Pre Paid Credit Cards) we had to pay a deposit. We both decided to get a limit of $1.000, so we both had to pay $2.000, which we will not get back until we cancel these Credit Cards. To open a Savings Account we also had to put in deposits. We decided to cash in $4.000 to have some money for bad times. This makes $6.000 we spend for bank stuff in the first week after our arrival.

2. Living: When we first moved here we stayed in a Guesthouse in West Hollywood, which was furnished, located in a nice neighborhood and costed us $2.000 per month. We moved to our own flat after six weeks. To get our own apartment we had to pay a security deposit of $1.600. And in order to get a Gas and Water account we had to pay another $250 for deposits.

3. A car: In the US (especially in Los Angeles) living without a car is not possible. When we first moved here we had a rental for about 1 month, because it took us some time to find the right car. For the rental cars we paid about $1.500 for 2 months. Our Ford Explorer costed us $7.300. The insurance for our car costs about $100 per month. We also had to pay taxes to the DMV (around 10% of the purchase price) and get a Smog Test for about $50.

4. Furniture: We already decided to look for cheap furniture and ktichen appliances before we even moved. This gave us some time to find some really bargains. Since last week we have tall furnitures for our flat and don’t need to buy more things in the near future. All in all everything we have in this flat (I don’t count our clothes, cosmetic stuff or food) costed us no more than $4.500.

These are the big expenses we had after our move to LA. You can see that we spent about $20.000 in the first months. This is actually less than we expected, but this mostly due to the fact that we boths found jobs really quick and therefor didn’t “lose” a lot of money. I hope this helps everyone who has this huge journey right in front of him/herself a bit. But please note: This our just our expenses. So please don’t count this as a must.

On Wednesday we opened a bank account at the Bank of America. We decided not to do this online, so we went there in the morning and were actually surprised by how easy it went. You don’t have to be afraid about it, but I still do have a few tips for every Greencard winner that will have to do this soon:

1. What you need to open a bank account is: A Social Security Number, your Greencard and Passport, an american address and an american phone number. For the address and phone number you can use those of friends. Postboxes and foreign phone numbers are not allowed. Also – at the Bank of America – you need a national E-Mail-Address for online banking. Our banker told us to get one at G-Mail oder Yahoo for example.

2. Bring some money! There are minimum amounts that have to stay on your account in order to keep you away from paying a monthly fee.

3. Don’t think that you will get a credit card immediately! In the US you will not get a credit card without a credit history, but you will be able to get a secured credit card. A secured credit card is like a Pre-Paid credit card. You decide on a certain amount – for example $ 1000 – and pay it to the bank as a deposit. For six months you can now use your secured credit card as a normal one. You can buy stuff and have to pay your bills. The only important thing is: Do not buy stuff for more than 1000 bugs monthly and do pay your bills in time. After six months the bank will check if you are on the level to get a “real” credit card.

4. If you like Hello Kitty, do not open a joint bank account with your husband. This is what happened to me and now I am not allowed to get my Hello Kitty checks and cards, because Flo doesn’t want to have them.

For now we are proud owners of our temporary debit cards and checks. In about two weeks our “real” cards with a beach image on them will arrive. But it still feels good to be a little more american after all.

For at least the first six months winning a Greencard is like living in a dream cloud! You just can’t stop to dream about how your new life abroad is going to be, how nice you will live (at the beach in our case) and how good the jobs you get may be. But someday you wake up from that dream and hit reality!

I have tried to convince myself that it will be a long and hard road from the beginning. But you just seem to catch yourself hanging by dream clouds. Flo and I are grown up enough to know that we have hard paths in front of us, so right now (six months before our actual moving date) we are doing a lot of research on emmigration and about the US in general.

What scares us the most ist he money part! Not the actual money, because we do have enough to move, but the money and credit card situation in general. As you already may have heard as an american you pay by credit card the most! You pay your rent by credit card you pay your car by credit card and you pay your food by credit card. The only problem about that is: You don’t get a credit card in the US, when you don’t have a credit history! And I guess you can figure out by yourself what that means!

To make it short: Your credit history is a certificate that proves your credit reliability. It is a record (made by Equifax, Transunion and Experian) that states your past usage of your credit card and how fast and constant you paid back your credits. The higher your score (between 300-850), the better is your credit reliability (the so called FICO score).

First thing that may come to your mind is: I do have a credit card in my homeland, so why can’t they just write me a credit history for the US? Well, they just can’t! The only credit card company that does that is American Express. And, oh wonder: No, we don’t use American Express!

Right now we are trying to figure out ways to help us with the credit history problem! I will keep you updated with it! But anyways: If you have some advice, you are more than welcome!