Money & taxes
SCHUFA
SCHUFA is Germany's largest credit bureau. Its score influences apartment applications, phone contracts, and credit cards. Newcomers start with no record, not a bad one; a SCHUFA-Auskunft for landlords can be ordered online, and one free data copy per year is your legal right.
SCHUFA Holding AG collects data on credit behavior: accounts, loans, phone contracts, payment defaults, and court records. From these it computes scores that banks, landlords, and telecom providers use to assess reliability. Most entries are positive or neutral; serious negative entries come from unpaid bills that survived two formal reminders, terminated loans, or insolvency.
Two products matter in practice: the paid SCHUFA-BonitätsAuskunft, the certificate landlords expect with rental applications, and the free Datenkopie under Article 15 GDPR, which shows everything stored about you once per year at no cost.
What it means for working students
As a new arrival you have no SCHUFA history, which some landlords treat with suspicion; compensate with proof of blocked-account funds, a parental guarantee (Bürgschaft), or your working student contract. Build a clean record by paying rent, phone, and streaming bills on time, and avoid impulsively opening multiple credit lines. Before applying for apartments, order the BonitätsAuskunft once and reuse the PDF; it stays acceptable for a few months.