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Comment by cyberpunk | Hacker News Reader

Schufa scores are definitely a thing in Germany; I mean, same thing different name..

Its not. Schufa collects negative entries. If you did not pay back loans in time you will have a bad Schufa. To the contrary in the US you have to have “good credit” meaning you have to have participated in the “credit system” and behaved well.

If you don’t have any record: Great for Schufa, bad in the US.

Oh I thought no debt history would equal clean credit. That’s bananas, surely it’s safer to lend to someone who has never been in debt? I don’t get the logic..

Depending on the lender, they might actually be after people who are always in debt, and who pay their credit cards bills each month but never entirely pay them off.

No, it's safer to lend to someone who has handled credit well (i.e. by paying it back) than someone who has no track record.

There's a catch-22 if rules are so strict so that you can't get credit because you haven't had credit before, but in general "positive" credit reporting seems pretty beneficial.

haven't been to the US, but you can get a clean schufa if you just move to the country. I've _heard_ that in the US you'd need to get and pay off debt in order to have a good standing, a lack of any record is considered suspicious.

That is absolutely true. I was treated as subprime despite having no debts and a high credit score (on annualcreditreport.com) merely because I had never taken on debt. I would get rejected even for $500 department store credit cards! It’s ridiculous.

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