[Rusties]

Hi Kathie, I must admit that our experience was quite the opposite.

We landed in Denver on 19 December, opened the bank account and got the SSN admin done on 20 December, bought a 2002 Ford Explorer cash on 23 December, had the car insured through Geico for $76p/m for 6 months, signed the lease on our very nice appartment on 27 December...moved in on 29 December, enrolled my son in the new high school on 10 January and he started on 17 January...and everything worked out pretty good so far.

We couldn't get someone else to finance a car for us as that was apparently illegal (?), but the bigger companies all say that no credit is better than bad credit.

We had to put one month's rent down as a deposit which they would credit back to us once we received our SSN - and that worked out nicely bacause that meant that we basically didn't have to pay rent the second month. We also got our renter's insurance through Geico for $21p/m.

The only "negative" we experienced was that we had to pay $150 deposit for Comcast for the phone/internet/tv - but that was the only service provider that required the deposit due to a lack of credit history.

Good luck with your ventures....ours have been magical so far.

Regards,
Pierre