My sister has pretty much always earned more than the rest of us. And she’s good at saving too, she probably still has her first communion money salted away somewhere. When we were little she always had her sweets after my brother and I finished ours (then she would share them with us – she was the youngest, we were bigger).
She has, however, not borrowed much and travelled around a lot. When she lived in England it took her months to get a bank account. When she lived in America, she was refused a store card for some big department store. The guy in the shop said that this was the first time this had ever happened. When she moved back home, for a long time the bank wouldn’t let her have cheques. Now that she has her own little business, they have reluctantly allowed her to have the odd cheque but they continue to be suspicious.
My sister is the most solvent person I know. She likes to have six months’ living expenses in the bank in case of an emergency, yet she has consistently had difficulty with banks due to living all over the place. Meanwhile, the world’s economy is going belly up because of the sub-prime mortgages. Oh God, why did we decide to give our economic well-being over to the banks? I mean, really, the banks?
When we bought our first house it almost fell through at the last moment because neither of us had a credit record, having never had a credit card or a borrowing history of any kind. Fortunately we then plunged ourselves headfirst into debt with our first mortgage and since then we’ve not had a problem…
Exact same thing happened to me. I never wanted a credit card in college because I didn’t want the debt. I also lived out of the country in a place where they were nearly useless (at the time) so didn’t ever even apply for one until I was 28. I was shocked to find out that I essentially had terrible credit because I was logical and responsible. Just another example of how the credit industry is a giant legal scam.