One of the most difficult aspects of moving to the US has been trying to get my head around the concept of a “credit rating” – a system whereby individuals are scored based on their history of debt; how much they have incurred; how well they’ve paid it off; just how much they can be depended on to fulfil their financial obligations and, crucially, to sign up for more directly afterwards.
Being debt-free – probably luckily for me, honestly – is not a positive, when it comes to the credit rating system. Someone who has never owned a credit card – or bought a couch on a three-year payment plan; or signed up for a store card; or taken out a bank loan – will have zero in the way of a credit history. Their credit score, despite the fact that we would largely consider them a financially savvy, wise spender, will be dirt.
The true catch-22 of the matter is that, without a credit score, it is incredibly difficult to get access to credit. I was only able to get a credit card because I went with my now husband to his bank, met with an adviser, tied our fortunes together, so to speak, and was granted favour on his recommendation.
The limit was $300.
But debt, as we all know, loves company, and a mere two years later I am mired in it. My $300 big-bank credit card now has a limit of $1,000. I later signed up for a Walmart credit card, responding to a flyer I received in the post, telling me that I had been pre-approved for a line of credit “up to $10,000!”
These flyers are a regular feature in our mailbox and I ignore the majority of them, but this one promised 5% back on all Walmart purchases. As it’s our supermarket of choice, it seemed to make sense.
I was initially given a $500 limit on my Walmart card. Six months later, I received an email. “Good news! Your credit limit has been increased to $1,500!”
When I bought my Apple Watch, I applied for an Apple Card – all the better to save 5%, I thought, and 0% APR on purchases for the first six months – with a $500 limit. Six months later – this will shock you – its limit has been bumped up to $1,500.
In Ireland, I had one credit card, with Bank of Ireland, tied to my current account and paid off every month. It has a €3,000 limit, which seemed outrageously high but, most importantly, was never reached.
I paid my rent each month with money I earned from whatever work I was doing at the time. If I wanted to buy a couch, say, I saved up – or put it on my credit card, sure to pay it off before month’s end. When a friend bought a couch from DFS and agreed to pay it off over three years, I thought her foolish.
My attitude to credit card and similar debt, at that time, was that any debt incurred today was simply a form of theft from one’s future self. The me of two years’ time, I would think, is going to be very angry at me for buying those shoes she doesn’t like any more.
But in America, debt is considered an essential part of existing in this society they call a democracy. Each medical bill, even, is accompanied by a page explaining how you can choose to make your payments in instalments – that they know the majority of Americans will not be able to afford their healthcare is what makes it all the more egregious – and so the very act of living your life brings with it a necessary line of credit.
With the exception of the supermarket and a handful of small boutiques, there are very few shops you’ll go into where you won’t be offered the chance to sign up for their “money-saving” store card. You are actively encouraged to go into debt in order to buy the latest must-have couch cushions, or to redecorate your house for Halloween. (A future essay: what does the obsession with seasonal decoration say about America?)
According to a 2021 study, the average American’s debt stands at $38,000 – not including mortgage debt – and 80% of Americans have some form of consumer debt. It’s worth adding that “consumer debt” does not include student debt; the average American household owes $46,000 for the debt they incurred when they went to college. Looking at our own financials, this seems eerily accurate.
We’re working on getting out of said debt, mind you; my husband is a great fan of the snowball method, and we recently consolidated our largest credit card debts. We also put a freeze on the cards, having been advised that cancelling the cards altogether would, in fact, harm our credit rating. Back to that catch-22.
We are both – and this is a terrible combination – overspenders. And I have chosen a career path that relies largely on the kindness of strangers to pay my wages, along with the occasional bit of freelance work, the payments for which almost always go straight into one credit card or another. (Is this a good or a bad time for a “subscribe now” button? I may as well…)
I have been thinking a lot about the American Dream since coming here, moving into what is, in a way, my own version of it. (I have a pantry and an American fridge and a baby so, in a way, all of my dreams really have come true.)
There is a sort of belief, universally held to, that every American has the ability to succeed. With determination and self-belief and commitment to a 60-hour work week and a can-do attitude and respect for your mother (and without ever needing to go to the ER), you can be the next Jeff Bezos!
Bezos, for what it’s worth, went to Princeton University where, with financial aid, you’ll pay at least $10,000 a year for the privilege. Without financial aid, it’s $79,500. It’s fair to assume that he came from something that looks a lot like money.
What holds up this belief, more than anything else, though – the idea that you are the arbiter of your own fortune, captain of your own ship, master of your own destiny – is that, if you don’t succeed; if you end up mired in debt; if you drown under the weight of student and mortgage and medical debt – that, too, will be your fault.
It’s the very same ethos that made The Secret a multi-million dollar bestseller, and has Insta huns from Dublin to Dubai extolling the virtues of its “positive thinking” mantras.
Hold a mirror up to “you can do it!” and it very quickly becomes “you clearly didn’t try / work / hustle hard enough!” If you don’t seize the opportunities given to you, you have no one to blame but yourself, right?!
It’s all so simplistic, overlooking the very structures that oppress marginalised people; keep families in poverty, generation after generation; guarantee “success” and “affluence” to the white middle-class while telling those wading around in the dirt that they simply didn’t try hard enough to get out of it. (Remember, if you’ve never had access to credit, it will be almost impossible to get access to credit.)
I’m reminded of the baseball cap I bought, a few years back – a limited edition design released by Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman, the duo behind the incredibly popular podcast, Call Your Girlfriend. A true denim blue, it had a pink and white embroidered slogan on the front, referring to, I thought, the patriarchy. I bought it around the time of the campaign to repeal the 8th amendment when everything I saw was somehow related to misogyny, patriarchy or both.
Now that I have lived in America for two years; have amassed a small but significant amount of debt; have paid $1,500 for the privilege of spraining my ankle and received bills for more than $100,000 for the birth of my son (most of which were paid by the health insurance provided by my husband’s job), I realise that what the slogan referred to was America as a whole.
It reads, “The Scam is Structural.”
Sometimes, on sunny days, my Dad wears it to protect his head from the sun.
(There is a red-winged blackbird outside my window as I write this. For all of the difficulties I’ve had navigating American life, every day I am faced with a delightful new creature – a turtle, crossing the road; crawdads, singing merrily in the pond behind our house; a hummingbird, confused, looking for nectar beneath the eaves of our front porch – that provides a welcome reminder that some differences are good differences.)
I Have Never Had Access to More Money than I do Right Now