Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background.

Ways to establish credit history for international student
I would like to establish credit history - have heard it's useful to   gain employment and makes it easy to rent an apartment? Higher credit scores will make it easier with landlords, that's true. As to employment - they do background checks, which means that they usually won't like bad things, but won't care about the good things or no things (they'll know you're a foreigner anyway). Is it safe to assume that this implies I have no history whatsoever? Probably, but you can verify pulling through AnnualCreditReport, don't go around giving your personal information everywhere. Is taking out a secured loan the only way for me? No, but it's one of the easiest. Better would be getting a secured Credit Card, not loan. For loan you'll have to pay interest, for a credit card (assuming you pay off all your purchases immediately) you will only pay the credit card fees (for secured credit cards they charge ~$20-100 yearly fees, so do shop around, the prices vary a lot!). If you're using it wisely, after a year it will be converted to a regular credit card and the collateral will be returned to you with interest (which is actually very competitive, last I heard it was around 2%, twice as much as the online savings accounts). As to a secured loan - you'll be paying 4% to CU for your own money. Doesn't make any sense at all for me. For credit cards you'll at least get some value for your money - convenience, additional fraud protection, etc. The end result will be the same. Usually the credit starts to build up after ~6-12 months (that's why after a year your secured CC will be converted to a regular one). Make sure to have the statement balance in the range of 10-30% of your credit limit, to get the best results. Would it make much better sense to wait till I get a job (then I would   have a fixed monthly salary and can apply for a regular CC directly) You can apply, but you'll probably be rejected. As I mentioned in another answer elsewhere, the system in the US is such that you're unable to get credit if you don't already have credit. Which is kindof a magic circle, which you can break with the secured credit card as the least costly solution.