The Transformation Is Complete

One of the last things I have been able to accomplish since my move south has been the establishment of a credit rating. Having only been in this country for a little over a year and at my current job for about 8 or 9 months, the decision makers aren't taking any chances. I still have my excellent credit rating back in Canada; I keep getting credit increases on my cards, interests rates are lowered without any argument upon request, and I still get notices in the mail from my bank offering me lines of credit. But all those are in Canada... which is fine but it's just a pain in the ass paying the bills because of the hassle I need to go through. I can't pay online my bills from back home with my account here because they won't allow me to send money from my checking account to a Canadian credit card company. This forces me to either wire transfer money to my Canadian bank account at a cost of $40 to send and an additional $10 to receive, or write them a check from here and have them do the currency exchanges themselves..... which can take up to 10 business days.

My hope is to one day get an American based credit card so I can close the ones I have from back home and just deal with one currency and in a timely fashion. Unfortunately I get the same response from every where that I apply. They all give me that same excuse that basically says I haven't been here long enough yet. Yes I have a checking account but since it's so new, there's nothing to base my history on a background check. So I phoned Capital One in the States and asked them to contact the Capital One Bank in Canada to get a credit reference because I've held a card from them for years now and never have had any problems. Well, apparently even though they have the same name they are in fact two different companies and they refused to make that background check because it was in a different country.

It was kind of frustrating getting rejection letters from the American companies and letters of "Congratulations on your increased credit limit!!" from the Canadians in the mail on the exact same day. I finally gave up and decided to just wait a year or so before applying again.

Julie suggested that I go to a department store and get one of their cards, you know the ones that are given out to anybody with a face for a mere 39% APR. The plan of attack was to use the card for things we would normally buy anyway and pay off the balance every month in order to jumpstart my credit rating. Well the other day I got my first American based credit card!! A $300 limit at JC Penney! Wooo hoooooo!!

I have no idea what they actually sell there but they better have some sort of cafeteria. Who wants to go out for lunch... on me? :)