Was on debt..can I now enter UK on visitor visa
Whether or not you'll be allowed to enter the UK is a topic for a different forum (and really more a topic for a lawyer rather than strangers on the internet). That being said, as a non-lawyer giving my opinion of the situation, you should be granted access to the UK as the banks/money lenders/phone companies don't have a relationship with Border Entry. With regards to debts in the UK, there is some precedent to debts being waived after a certain period of time, but the minimum is 6 years for unsecured debt, and the companies you owe money to can still chase you for payment, but can't use legal proceedings to force you to pay. However, the big caveat to this is that this only applies to residents of England and Wales.  From the cleardebt.co.uk site: What is out of date debt? Debts like these are covered by the Limitation Act 1980, which is a   statute of limitations that provides time scales as to how long a   creditor can chase you (the debtor) for an unpaid debt. The Limitation   Act 1980 only applies when no acknowledgement of a debt has been made   between you and the creditor for six years for unsecured debts or 12   years for mortgage shortfalls and secured loans. This law only applies   to residents of England and Wales. When does debt go out of date? If the creditor fails to maintain contact with you for six years or   more, you may be able to claim that the outstanding debt is statute   barred under the Limitation Act 1980. This means the creditor cannot   use the legal system to enforce payment of the outstanding debt. The   time limit starts from when you last acknowledged owing the debt or   made a payment to the account. When can a creditor pursue an unsecured debt?  You may think a creditor has written off your debt if you haven’t heard from them for   a long time. The reality is that the debt still exists. The creditor   can still contact you and they are entitled to chase the outstanding   debt, even if the debt has been statute barred, but they are unable to   use legal proceedings to force you to pay. Creditors can pursue an   unsecured debt if:
One possibility is to ask RBC to lend you some money (or more specifically, to lend you some more money): an overdraft, a personal loan, or whatever. To discuss this you should to talk to your personal banker (not a teller), probably by appointment: to explain why you want it, and how and when you expect repay it. You might (I don't know) say that you want the loan (or some of the loan) to pay off the Visa, and/or for the travel. If you've only just arrived in Canada, however, then I don't see why they should want to lend it to you (i.e. why they should think you're a good credit risk). Is there anyone else (e.g. an immigration sponsor or parent or employer) who might co-sign (a.k.a. guarantee) the loan? I have never had this issue before with any other credit cards but I got an RBC Visa in Canada In some countries (not Canada) a Visa behaves more like a debit card, i.e. you can only spend money you have in the account. I also have approx. £6000 in debt Just a note: you're guaranteed to get a return on whatever debt you pay off quickly.  Even if your debt is only 2%, you get a guaranteed return of 2% - which is higher than most of the savings here in the US (not sure about the UK). You mention saving for a house, which is also a good idea, but with debt, I'd recommend eliminating that if you're paying any interest at all.  This won't be popular to write, but markets are high right now, so even though you may feel that you're missing out, the return on paying off debt is guaranteed; markets aren't. "This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/04/britain-addicted-debt-crash-2007-sub-prime-mortgages-personal-credit) reduced by 93%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; This is, of course, what determined the depth of the last crash, the wheeze of the collateralised debt obligation, which left no one able to distinguish between a good debt and a bad one.  &gt; Alex Brazier, executive director of financial stability at the Bank of England, warned last month that consumer loans had gone up by 10% in the past year, with average household debt having already eclipsed 2008 levels.  &gt; Student loan debt is counted separately from consumer loans, and stands at &amp;pound;13bn a year.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6y43cq/we_are_addicted_to_debt_and_headed_for_a_crash_it/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~204396 tl;drs so far."") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr ""PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome."") | *Top* *keywords*: **debt**^#1 **know**^#2 **year**^#3 **much**^#4 **loan**^#5" What you are describing is called following (or going over) a budget. There is no debt or loans in the scenario you are describing. Simply put a budget is when you allocate a certain amount of your income for expenses in various categories, and a certain amount for savings.  So lets say you earn $100 a month. If you budget $50 in expenses every month, then that means you try not to spend more then $50 a month, and the rest you save. In any given month, you may go over your self-imposed budgeted amount for expenses. That simply means you are over the budgetted amount for that month, but that does not make you 'in debt'. It just means you didn't meet your goal for that month (or whatever time period you created). However, if you do this habitually then you clearly don't have a realistic budget, because the idea behind a budget is a plan that you can realistically meet on a consistent basis. Sometimes you may have to break it, but it should be made in such a way that if you work at it, it is consistently achievable. If not, then you need to rethink your budget. Instead of thinking in terms of taking loans from yourself, I would encourage you to think in terms of saving up for goals and only spending money from those 'goal funds.' In this way, you are not arbitrarily spending money that would instead go into savings, but rather explicitly setting money aside for those goals. This will also help you to see where exactly your money is going and also help you to prioritize your financial goals. The essential (and obvious) thing to avoid getting back into debt (or to reduce debt if you have it) is to make your total income exceed your total expenses. That means either increasing your income or reducing your total expenses.   Either take effort.   Basically, you need a plan. If your plan is to increase income, work out how.  If the plan is to increase hours in your current, you need to allow for your needs (sleep, rest, etc) and also convince your employer they will benefit by paying you to work more hours.   If your intent is to increase your hourly rate, you need to convince a current or prospective employer that you have the capacity, skills, etc to deliver more on the job, so you are worth paying more.    If your intent is to get qualifications so you can get a better paying job, work out how much effort (studying, etc) you will apply, over how long, what expenses you will carry (fees, textbooks, etc), and how long you will carry them for (will you accept working some years in a higher paying job, to clear the debt?). Most of those options involve a lot of work, take time, and often mean carrying debt until you are in a position to pay it off.     There is nothing wrong with getting a job while studying, but you have to be realistic about the demands.   There is nothing sacrosanct about studying that means you shouldn't have a job.   However, you need to be clear how many hours you can work in a job before your studies will suffer unnecessarily, and possibly accept the need to study part time so you can work (which means the study will take longer, but you won't struggle as much financially). If your plan is to reduce expenses, you need a budget.    Itemize all of your spend.  Don't hide anything from that list, no matter how small.   Work out which of the things you need (paying off debt is one), which you can get rid of, which you need to reduce - and by how much.   Be brutal with reducing or eliminating the non-essentials no matter how much you would prefer otherwise.  Keep going until you have a budget in which your expenses are less than your income.   Then stick to it - there is no other answer.    Revisit your budget regularly, so you can handle things you haven't previously planned for (say, rent increase, increase fees for something you need, etc).    If your income increases (or you have a windfall), don't simply drop the budget - the best way to get in trouble is to neglect the budget, and get into a pattern of spending more than you have.   Instead, incorporate the changes into your budget - and plan how you will use the extra income.   There is nothing wrong with increasing your spend on non-essentials, but the purpose of the budget is to keep control of how you do that, by keeping track of what you can afford. Since you're a US citizen, submitting W8-BEN was wrong. If you read the form carefully, when you signed it you certified that you are not a US citizen, which is a lie and you knew it. W9 and W8 are mutually exclusive. You're either a US person for tax purposes or you're not, you cannot be both. As a US citizen - you are a US person for tax purposes, whether you have any other citizenship or not, and whether you live in (or have ever been to) the US or not. You do need to file tax returns just like any other US citizen. If you have an aggregate of $10K or more on your bank accounts outside of the US at any given day - you need to file FBAR. FATCA forms may also be applicable, depending on your balances. From foreign banks' perspective you're a US person, with regard to their FATCA obligations. Whether or not you'll be punished is hard to tell. Whether or not you could be punished is easy to tell: you could. You knowingly broke the law by certifying that you're not a US citizen when you were. That is in addition to un-filed tax returns, FBAR, etc etc. The fact that you were born outside of the US and have never lived there is technically irrelevant. Not knowing the law is not a reasonable cause for breaking it. Get a US-licensed tax adviser (EA/CPA licensed in the US) to help you sort it out. Not entirely true.  Argentina walks away without the ability to get credit in the normal way, but with other (more expensive) avenues to get credit if needed.  However, they also no longer have to pay the bond debt, which frees up a fair amount of tax income to go to the things they were previously paying with debt.    Singer comes away with... nothing.  He's out the cost of purchasing the debt.  He's out the cost of litigating.  He actually came away with worse than nothing.  He lost bad. Talk to a good tax accountant in the UK who deals with this sort of thing, as it sounds like most of the issues concern local tax. You actually have at least four different ways to do this transaction: You definitely need good local tax and legal advice. No matter how you do it, if the borrower defaults, it will be socially ugly and will involve some kind of collection or legal action if you want your money back.  If it were me, I think I'd choose the lease with option to buy. At least that way you may be able to inspect the property from time to time, make sure it is kept up, and be able to get it back through eviction rather than foreclosure. It won't hurt your credit rating. I wouldn't worry about it. The company can certainly pursue debt collections across borders but unless its a massive sum.. they will write it off. Now.. what the right thing to do is to take care of it... 1. for karma's sake and 2. so you don't make a bad name for foreigners. "Fortunately, this can be solved by simply going to the website. Unfortunately, the website is not very well designed, so it took a while to find it! However, looking at the section about entering your own meter reading in, it is clear that this is indeed a ""credit"", meaning ""they owe you money"".  Notice how the costs break down.  They estimated an energy usage (cost equivalent) of £104.09, which resulted in a ""bill"" of £29.77 (credit).  Then the customer entered a meter reading, which resulted in an actual energy usage (cost equivalent) of £142.45.  Since it was £38.36 higher, it went from a credit to a debit of £8.59.   Were £29.77 (Credit) to mean money was owed to SSE, they would owe a bit over £68 instead given the higher energy charges. You can see this help page to inquire about getting a refund, or simply allow this to carry over to your next bill.  Or - consider doing a self-entered meter reading, if one hasn't been done recently, to make sure that any actual excessive usage comes out of your credit (rather than being a shock at one time)." "Going off hearsay here. I believe your question is. ""Does not having a credit card lower your credit score"" If that is the question then in the UK at least the answer appears to be yes. Having a credit card makes you less of a risk because you have proven that you can handle a little bit of debt and pay it back. I have a really tiny credit history. Never had a credit card and the only people who will lend to me are my own bank because they can actually see my income / expenditure. When I have queried my bank and at stores offering credit they have said that no credit history isn't far off a bad credit record. Simply having a credit card and doing the odd transactions show's lenders you are at least semi-responsible and is seen as a positive. Not having a credit card and not having much else for that matter makes you an unknown and an unknown is a risk in the eyes of lenders." "Although now there are ""welcome"" banking packages when I landed in 2008 I couldn't find any and Vancity gave me a secured visa nonetheless. Let me emphasize: I didn't have a credit history, score at all. I doubt this changed much. The bank has zero risk." You were an unsecured creditor. If Refco had a corporate credit card Visa would be in the exact same position you were. Nothing to do with being the little guy per se, just that UCC Article 9/the Bankruptcy Code has a massive preference for secured creditors over unsecureds. (Which I think is not the best idea, but for other reasons.)  Just took my Secured Credit final a few days ago. Simply NO, you can NOT be put in prison for unpaid debt in America!! However, if you commit a crime to earn wealth, you can be put in prison for that. It's misleading news. Comparing debt levels in nominal terms is completely pointless over a period of more than a few months.  The article you responded to quite literally quoted extracts from the article you subsequently posted and explained why they were misleading or incorrect.