I'm Banking On It

One of the biggest struggles we've encountered with life in the UK is getting our own car. Rachel has a company car, but when she is off to work or traveling, I am truly a Kept Man.

I've talked to a dozen different companies regarding leasing or buying a car. The trouble is, even though we have good credit in the USA, we have no credit here. So I went to a dealership and asked them what they could do to help us get a car. The salesman I spoke to was Canadian so he had been through some of this, I thought. It was there I learned that your credit history here starts when you register to vote. Soon after I learned, not suprisingly, we can't vote here and therefore can't register to vote. Canadians can vote here, by the way, as they are members of the British Commonwealth. Great - now what?

Apparently we can build up credit via just using a bank account. When we first arrived, Rach was able to open an HSBC (the world's largest bank) Passport account -- this account requires an address in the UK and a passport to open. It has some nice features for someone just arriving in the country, like it comes with a mobile phone SIM card that works well for calling the States (we used it in my mobile.) Its also a good account for transferring foreign currency over here or vice versa. Unfortunately, it builds no credit and is limited as to what you can do with it. After a year, it will convert to a normal, credit-building account (or so we have been told.) We attempted to add me to that same account, just so I could get a bank card with a chip in it, and even though we spent an hour at the HSBC and filled out lots of forms, nothing came in the post. Weeks later we followed up and found that only one person can be on a Passport account so all of our work was a wasted effort (thanks for notta HSBC; how about a phone call???)

Good news, though. Just this past weekend, I think I finally opened us a real bank account. About a month ago, I called NatWest, another bank. I immediately had a REAL person talking to me. They had no issues opening an account for us. I was able to do all the account details over the phone and we qualified for one of their best accounts -- if we want to pay for it; most savings accounts here come with lots of perks you probably won't use and cost a certain amount each month. Passport accounts, for example, are about 7 pounds a month ($14). The account we qualified for includes a Wine Club and travel concierge, among other things. The only issue with NatWest was that I had to confirm my ID and address via post; there were lots of things I could use to do this but nothing a non-resident would have. Eventually, we resolved that I could take in my passport to a branch in town and our account would be good to go. I even got a follow up call yesterday from our account advisor; I think it might actually happen! We will even get the UK equivalent of a Roth IRA, too.

Now that the bank account is in order... time to focus on getting that car.