Another question for the fine people reading this thread:

Does having a joint account in the USA have any affect on credit rating in the USA? Is there any benefit to opening a joint account? 95% of our income will be made by myself

Credit
 

I spend about 40% of my year in the US.

The biggest hurdle to clear will be getting a Social Security Number. It's not hard, maybe an hour in your nearest SS office. But because the US is a bureaucracy on par with certain developing nations in its love of multiple copies, documents being faxed and faxed again and general sloth, anticipate this taking anywhere between 8-16 weeks.

It's pretty hard to do anything financial without an SSN. It's hard to get paid without it.

You should be able to open a checking account as soon as you have the SSN. I chose Citibank because they are a nationwide affair and I wanted access to branches on the east coast. You could try a Californian -or, at least well represented in CA - bank like City National. A lot of people in the entertainment industry bank with CN.

To build credit you can do a few things, given that it's hard to get credit if you don't have a history and that it's hard to get a history if you don't have access to credit.

1. Always keep funds in your checking account when you have it, never try to go overdrawn, keep the minimum in it to avoid the monthly fees (at Citi this is $1,500)

2. Get a secured Credit Card, use it a lot, never miss a payment. Capital One normally will give you a card. They'll demand a $50 bond and to start with give you a credit limit of $200 or something laughable. You can then ring them up and agree a higher limit, $5000 for example. They'll ask for a $5,000 deposit. Give it to them and use the card as much as you can for a year. It's a hassle, yes, but that five grand is only going to earn you, if you're lucky, $50 in interest over the year at the current rates. After a year or so, ask your bank for a credit card and six months after that you should be OK to apply to Amex and the like.

3. The other way to go is to open a savings account, a CD account, standing for Certificate of Deposit. Your bank will allow you a personal loan to the value of the account when it's used as surety. Yes, you're paying interest on the money you are essentially borrowing for no reason, but the bank reports loans to the credit agencies and this all helps to build your history.

8 - 16 weeks for a SSN :o

A colleague went over there and had his within 2 weeks

Social Security Administration is very efficient. I've never heard anyone have trouble getting a SS#

My son was born in September 25. The hospital sent in the paperwork on Monday October 1 and we got his SS# by Friday October 5 by mail. The card (which is just printed on paper) came in another week.

As for joint accounts, it's really a matter of personal finance, not credit rating. The credit scores are for individuals, not couples, so you will have your own credit file, and your wife will have hers. It's good idea for both of you to get established with your own credit cards (separate accounts) so you can both start building credit.

It's an entirely different sack of cats to born here of citizen parents than to be here on a work visa.

There are all manner of background checks that go on after your initial interview.

Some of these will be visa dependent. To be fair, I can only talk about my class of visa - O1 - and it may be that other classes of visa get processed quicker.

8+ weeks is in no way unusual for my class of visa. I know many people in the same boat as me.

YMMV.

Confirmed by work that i will be working in our Woodland Hills office. Kind of happy with that, but will be expensive/annoying when we want to go out clubbing on weekends.

Going for interview to sort out E3 visa soon

The purpose of the joint bank account is so you both have legal access to the money.

this is one way how relationships can end rather quickly--one is the bread winner has all the money in their own account means power/control.

Sure you each could have separate accounts if you want.

What is usually common in relationships is that you have a joint account which is used for bill payments. Then you have separate accounts for your own personal savings/spending.

With direct deposit you can split your pay check where 95% goes into the checking account and 5% goes into a savings account.

With the SSN---it shouldnt take you 2 months. I dont know if they do it now this way but they used to issue dummy SSNs to people in the country on student work visas. the number usually began with a 98 or 99.

Another typical requirement for renting is a security deposit --some places do a few hundred dollars---others ask for one months rent. In looking for a place you need to show them your job offer letter that states what your income will be so they know you can reasonably afford to live there.

The rough estimate of affordability many places use is 28% of gross monthly income.

If you were making $120,000---thus monthly income is $12,000...25% of that would be $3,000.

Unlike where you are from ---health insurance you ned to pay for and its usually tied to employment where you oay a pre tax amount per pay check. health insurance and dental insurance are separate programs. Insurance with couples/family is tied to marriage. If you two arent married..you have insurance but she would not. I dont know how Aussie insurance would cover you if at all.

Also what employers offer are pre tax medical flexible spending accounts. This is a use/lose thing. You estimate what your certain medical expense will be for the calander year...if you are decent health you would expect to see the general doctor once a year, dentist 2 times a year and if you take a pill every day you would add in that cost for the drug and its refills for the course of the year. Doing it pretax vs post tax will save you about 1/3 of the cost.

for example if your bill are $1,000 over a year...if you do this after taxes of around 1/3 of salary...it would actually cost you $1,500 because $500 goes to taxes. If you do this pretax than it would cost you the actual expense of $1,000---$333 would be saved and in your pocket. The $500 is still taxable at a roughly 1/3 or $167 in taxes paid...thus a net of $333 in your pocket.

$10,000

Thanks guys,

The joint account question was more about credit than anything else. We are married and run seperate accounts, but a joint one for billing.

Have offer letter from work and will easily be able to afford something in Woodland Hills. Can also show AUS stock holding and bank savings if needed, not worried about that.

Took health insurance into account when accepting the offer.


Does anyone have recommendations of places in Woodland Hills? Or areas/buildings to avoid?

The further away from Reseda and Panorama City, the better.

That depends. Do you want to be within walking distance from your office? If so, near what cross streets is it located?

Preferabbly walking distance. Located near Califa and De Soto.

I have had a bit of a look on WalkScore (great site) and know roughly the distance i am looking at, but was just wondering if people know of certain apartment blocks or areas that should either be kept away from, or recommended.

Wirelessly posted (htc Evo 4G LTE: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 4.1.1; en-us; EVO Build/JRO03C) AppleWebKit/534.30 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/534.30)

I'm airborne, so it's a bit cumbersome to search on my mobile phone. However, to the best of my recollection, Warner Ridge is the newest residential development in that area.

If you have children, or anticipating having children, consider Calabasas. The Calabasas public school system is outstanding.

There are all sorts of apartment complexes in the Warner Center area ...

Within easy walking distance are:

Avalon at Warner Center
5727 Canoga Ave, Woodland Hills, CA
(866) 245-2917 ‎ · avalonatwarnercenter.com

Eaves Warner Center
5727 Canoga Ave, Woodland Hills, CA
(866) 245-2917 ‎ · eavesbyavalon.com

The Pointe at Warner Center
6150 Canoga Ave, Woodland Hills, CA
(818) 610-1117 ‎ · thepointeatwarnercenter.com

Bella Vista At Warner Ridge Apartments
6150 De Soto Ave, Woodland Hills, CA
(818) 888-5218 ‎ · equityapartments.com

The Montecito Apartments
6203 Variel Avenue
Woodland Hills, CA 91367
(818) 316-1300 liveatthemont.com‎

Waterford Apartments
21530 Califa Street
Woodland Hills, CA 91367
(818) 992-0377

Warner Pines
21601 Erwin Street
Woodland Hills, CA 91367
(818) 703-7803

Frankly, most apartments south of Victory Blvd should be fine. North into Canoga Park, while there are pockets of O.K. apartments (Especially near the Orange Line station on Canoga between Victory & Vanowen)....there are also some terrible ones, and it is on the edge of the "Little Barrio," where crime & filth can be an issue.