Becoming A Somebody
This whole deal with social security numbers is a real pain. Unless you are working, you can't get a number. Unless you have a number, you can't sign up for finance. Unless you sign up for finance you can't get a credit rating. Unless you get a credit rating, you can't get a loan.
The guy down at the Honda dealership said that people like us are called "ghosts", because we don't exist. So how do we get ourselves out of this hole? It seems that you just need to buy a car. And not just buy a car, you need to buy a car on finance for several months, possibly two years. Also, the finance rate is higher than normal, quite a lot higher, like 15%-20% per year, and you need to have a 50% down payment!! This seems like a giant scam.
But without this, there is no show that we will be able to buy a house. We can barely rent a place without a social security number. Oh well, it seems we just need to pay our way out of this, but just try to be as smart as we can by putting the absolute minimum required on finance and minimising our costs.
2 comments:
You are already a somebody. They just don't know it yet :-)
I'm glad that you guys have made the trip safely despite your little adventure with missing luggage. You gotta admit though that life would be pretty boring if things like this didn't happen. You'd have nothing to write in your blog!
I still can't quite believe that you're no longer just over the hill in Karori. I'm very much looking forward to visiting you in a while. Probably not until I get back from Japan.
Tell me about the social security numbers...I think they just want to make people hard to live there.
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