1) You'll need a converter for any electronics, they're pretty cheap on Amazon. I believe European -> US converters are cheaper than US -> European converters because European voltage is usually... 240 volts, where as most voltage for normal electronics in the US is 120, right? For standard electronic equipment like a PS4 basic ones should be good... Things like hair dryers and anything that requires a lot of electricity to generate heat requires one of those adapter/converter things. I'm unsure of PC PSUs to be honest.
2) Don't stress the credit score thing, it's completely overblown by the internet and credit score scam service marketing. It's beneficial when borrowing in the US to have good credit history, and because credit history generally doesn't follow you from the EU to the US and vice-versa, you might have no credit history which doesn't mean you have bad credit, just no credit history. If you're opening up a US bank account when you're here, look into applying for a credit card from that bank. They'll give you a normal card, backed by Visa or Mastercard, not many benefits, but a low APR (interest rate), and you can use it for small purchases each month here and there, and just pay it off each month. You'll pay no interest, get a few small benefits (security, convenience, maybe some points/perks), and start to build credit history in the US. Many people use credit cards for gas/petrol in the US because of convenience and bonuses like double-points (cash back, shopping rewards) for using it at gas stations, and so that's a good idea. Within a month you'll have a credit history and have a low, but ultimately meaningless credit score and it'll progressively go up as you're financially responsible. Credit history matters when making a major purchase on credit, like buying a home through a mortgage or buying a car through an auto-loan... But when you're buying a house the lender/broker isn't just looking at your
score which is ultimately an arbitrary number, they're looking at your
history which is meaningful (e.g., have you paid your bills on time, have you ever defaulted on a loan in the last ~7 years, do you have a good balance of available credit and income, etc).
The credit agency industry has spent a lot of money over the last 25 years marketing to Americans that their credit score is the most important thing in the world. "I can't get a job without a good credit score!" "I can't get an apartment without a good score!" 98% of the time it's marketing bull shit, though there is a sliver of truth behind some of them (employers can pull credit
reports on you, but they're not credit scores; rental agencies can pull credit
reports on you), most of it's misleading bull shit. But because credit score is such an e-penis on the internet of people bragging about their high scores, it feeds into this marketing bull shit. RIght now, credit is easy and available because the economy is so strong, and so you shouldn't have any trouble doing a normal credit-bearing thing... Like if you want to buy a car you should have no trouble securing a reasonable loan from a reasonable lender with normal rates... If one lender won't give you 0% APR over 60 months for a car, go to another lender and they probably will (or through a dealership). Banks are competitive right now because interest rates are low and the economy is historically strong. Most of the hooplah around credit scores is marketing bull shit created by companies who try to prey on your anxiety and fear and make money off of you... sites like CreditKarma, 1800CreditScore.com, or the thousands of others over the last 10, 20 years.
A year ago I made a similar tool to the Credit Score tool from Credit Karma, etc., to check your ResetEra Member Validity score. Trust me this is a VERY important number and everybody should know their validity score... it'll give you so much more confidence when replying to posts to know your validity score ahead of time:
https://member-validity-score.glitch.me/
In the US, hundreds of millions of dollars is spent by financial scammers preying on people's anxiety about credit. "I can't move out of my parents house because I don't know my credit score!" "This girl won't date me because I don't know my credit score!" -- BUT SIGN UP FOR CREDIT KARMA AND GET YOUR FREE CREDIT SCORE* AND THEN YOU CAN MOVE OUT OF YOUR HOUSE AND FUCK THE SUPERMODEL OF YOUR DREAMS. They're really effective ads because in the US if you attach an arbitrary number to anything, people will care about it, brag about how high their's is online, and lie whenever someone asks to make that number higher than it might actually be. It's like talking about dick length on the internet.
*Free: Might not actually be free, and we sell your private financial data to the Russians
*Credit Score: Might not actually be a credit score and might just be a random average of some numbers that some schlub is making up
*Also if your score is "low" we're going to nag you, prey on your anxiety, and try to get you to give us money for products that you don't need that won't do anything for you, but it's our business model.
*The Russians
