How I Built 780+ Credit Score in the US as an New Immigrant Without A Job

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Questions Answered in Today’s Post and Video

1) How do I build great credit in the US?

2) How long does it take to build great credit in the US?

3) What do you need to build credit in the US?

4) What did I do to build my great credit in the US?

So how did I build a 780+ credit score in the US when I first moved there a few years ago, without any credit history as a new immigrant?  And most importantly, how can you do it too?

The Problem

So a few years ago I migrated to the US, but one major issue in doing so is you very quickly find yourself in a did-the-chicken-or-egg-come-first-type situation.  Meaning, when you land you are basically a ghost to the financial system and credit checking organisations so you can’t do any life building type task.  So setting up a bank account, getting a credit card, signing a lease to rent a property, let alone getting a mortgage to buy one, even setting up utilities like gas/electric/water and getting a cell/mobile phone contract can be difficult.  You then find yourself going around in circles by the ridiculousness of it.  You can’t get any of these things set up because you have no credit rating but without setting any of them up you can’t build any credit, so the chicken or egg situation.

Thankfully there are some options to break the impasse and that is what I will share with you.  What worked for me and very likely what will work for you and most importantly how I would have done things to make my life easier now with hindsight.

Prerequisites

Now before I start, I must say all of this is dependent on you first getting a social security number.  Without a social security number you cannot build credit, as your credit is all linked to your SSN.  Therefore, as soon as you get your SSN I strongly recommend you implement some sort of credit building strategy, like the one I will share shortly, ASAP, as it takes six months to say goodbye to ghost status and get your first score.

Sadly, quite annoyingly, the US government does not make this whole process easy for newly arriving immigrants… Often you can’t get your SSN until your visa becomes active after you first land in the US.  In which case, IF you can, I recommend as soon you get your visa approved travel to the US and become “active” in their eyes.  This will trigger the social security system to issue your number.  Then go back to your home country and finish getting your affairs in order to move.  The government will post your SSN to a US address only so just get it sent to a friend or family member in the US.

What Works

So that’s the pre-requisite stuff out of the way, so let’s begin, what worked best for me?  First step, as soon as you get your SSN go online and set up at least one secured credit card with any of the major banks.  Most banks offer them.  A secured credit card is a no-credit… credit card.  Meaning you agree a credit limit with the bank.  Typically $500 to $2000, at first, but you then transfer over your own cash up to the agreed limit.  Meaning you will be providing credit to yourself.  Yep…  You give your own cash as a holding deposit to the bank and they give you a pseudo credit limit up to this amount.  You then use the card and pay it off each month with more cash and the bank continues to hold your deposit as collateral.  Then after about 3-6 months, pending the bank, they give you your collateral back and the card flips over to a real credit card.  Obviously dependent on your being a good customer and not over-using the card but also ensuring you pay it off on time.  This entire process is separate to the real goal which is that these secured credit cards tick the box with the credit agencies as you now having credit.  Therefore, each month you spend on the card (and you must spend something, even just $1) and then successfully pay off the card each month you earn a positive credit event.  Yay!  So then month after month you repeat the process.  Personally, I set up a cheap subscription that charged my card about $1 each month and I also set up an automatic payment to clear the card each month (you will therefore need a US bank account to do that).  So the whole thing happened automatically without any intervention from me.  After about 6 months I got my first score and after about a year of doing this I was over 700. 

Summary

This strategy worked for me as a new immigrant but it will also work for locals in the US and anyone trying to build or re-build good credit.  Keep your utilisation low.  Make a very small charge on a credit card and ensure it automatically gets paid off each month.  There are, of course, many other ways to ‘hack’ or overcome this obstacle so I welcome you to provide any advice or tips for others in the comments below.  Ideally you have a company sponsoring your move and therefore helping you during this initial six month ghost period but good to be aware of all of this before you arrive.

Thanks for reading to the end!  If you like this kind of information… then please consider bookmarking my website and subscribing to my YouTube channel as new posts and videos to come each week!