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Debt and guilt are the same word
German has one word, Schuld, for both debt and guilt, and while linguists will tell you the connection is older and more complicated than it looks, the coincidence is quoted often enough in Germany that it has become a way of describing the national attitude to borrowing. Germans save a high proportion of their income, credit cards are far less used than in Britain or North America, and the everyday plastic is a Girocard — a debit card drawing directly on your current account, the Girokonto. Paying by instalments carries a faint whiff of imprudence, and a mortgage is often the only debt a household will ever take on, usually with a larger deposit than an English buyer would put down. The same instinct runs through public finance: the constitutional Schuldenbremse, or debt brake, limits how much the federal government may borrow, and arguments about relaxing it are genuinely heated. For a newcomer the practical upshot is that you will need a Girokonto for almost everything — rent, salary, insurance, phone contracts — and that being asked for a Schufa report, the national credit record, is routine rather than insulting.