You say western but I live in the UK and while credit ratings exist here I have never had a reason to care about them. Never even had a credit card. Only time I borrowed money is for my mortgage.
That’s not how credit scores work, my dude. Everybody has a credit score regardless of if they have a credit card or not. Your credit score gets used to qualify or disqualify you from a wide variety of financial products and services. A credit card is just one such product, and one of many ways you can influence your credit score.
In the US, you could conceivably get a home mortgage without a credit card if your credit score is high enough for other reasons. The person you’re replying to got a mortgage without a credit card because they’re in Europe, where most countries do the same thing the US used to do when qualifying a person for a financial product prior to credit scores: Manually assess their worthiness by reviewing their submitted income, investments, and past purchases.
The private FICO credit score is mostly an American thing, and has only been around for about 50 years, roughly the same as credit cards.
I’m in the market for a house, so I got my first credit card at the pleading of my broker and have just been putting my essentials on it to push my score over 800. It’s fucking stupid, I’m 40 and financially comfortable with a long history of fiscal responsibility, but I’ll play the stupid credit line game for a year or two to appease the algorithm and then shred the thing once I buy.
I have a feeling that there are a lot of ex-Occupy types like me coming up on that average homebuyers age, having eschewed the banking system for the past 20 years and now being forced to begrudgingly “play ball” like this just to get qualified to pay the money that they already have.
Yes the US is the only place that the FICO credit score is so ubiquitous. It’s been pushed onto US allies too but the allies generally don’t pay it backward all the way to their citizen’s purchases.
Yeah pretty much. Or at least the severity of the problem is largely the US. As credit does exist here but you can also completely ignore it. A fairly large percentage of adults don’t have credit cards here.
(Relatively) free healthcare and education probably helps (Poland here). At the same time, the housing crisis means a lot of people need credit for houses, but I don’t follow the system here to know how bad it is for that - barely anyone complains on this topic at least, seems like people who need credit get it.
Didn’t need a credit rating to get my mortgage, I guess having a bad credit rating from defaulting on loans would probably make it a lot harder though. But otherwise it isn’t something you specifically need to get and improve.
You say western but I live in the UK and while credit ratings exist here I have never had a reason to care about them. Never even had a credit card. Only time I borrowed money is for my mortgage.
You’re fucking with me right? …
Edit: My bad, did not understand the point you were making.
My new response is no shit you don’t gotta worry about credit score if you never owned a credit card lol
That’s not how credit scores work, my dude. Everybody has a credit score regardless of if they have a credit card or not. Your credit score gets used to qualify or disqualify you from a wide variety of financial products and services. A credit card is just one such product, and one of many ways you can influence your credit score.
In the US, you could conceivably get a home mortgage without a credit card if your credit score is high enough for other reasons. The person you’re replying to got a mortgage without a credit card because they’re in Europe, where most countries do the same thing the US used to do when qualifying a person for a financial product prior to credit scores: Manually assess their worthiness by reviewing their submitted income, investments, and past purchases.
The private FICO credit score is mostly an American thing, and has only been around for about 50 years, roughly the same as credit cards.
The usual response I get to not having a credit card is that I must get a credit score to rent or buy a house. Nope.
I’m in the market for a house, so I got my first credit card at the pleading of my broker and have just been putting my essentials on it to push my score over 800. It’s fucking stupid, I’m 40 and financially comfortable with a long history of fiscal responsibility, but I’ll play the stupid credit line game for a year or two to appease the algorithm and then shred the thing once I buy.
I have a feeling that there are a lot of ex-Occupy types like me coming up on that average homebuyers age, having eschewed the banking system for the past 20 years and now being forced to begrudgingly “play ball” like this just to get qualified to pay the money that they already have.
You don’t understand what credit score is then.
Is the UK not considered the West? I don’t understand.
He’s claiming this whole credit problem is US only and not the rest of the West.
Yes the US is the only place that the FICO credit score is so ubiquitous. It’s been pushed onto US allies too but the allies generally don’t pay it backward all the way to their citizen’s purchases.
Yeah pretty much. Or at least the severity of the problem is largely the US. As credit does exist here but you can also completely ignore it. A fairly large percentage of adults don’t have credit cards here.
(Relatively) free healthcare and education probably helps (Poland here). At the same time, the housing crisis means a lot of people need credit for houses, but I don’t follow the system here to know how bad it is for that - barely anyone complains on this topic at least, seems like people who need credit get it.
Didn’t need a credit rating to get my mortgage, I guess having a bad credit rating from defaulting on loans would probably make it a lot harder though. But otherwise it isn’t something you specifically need to get and improve.
Whoops, I misunderstood lol.
Edit