Cashing in pension to pay off debts

Enchilada_2

Hello,

I have debts and no savings (yeah life's great). Not tonnes of the stuff but enough to make life a general misery. Now you'll have to bear with me as I know NOTHING about money so it needs to be explained slowly IN BIG LETTERS.

I currently owe about £800 on a bank loan (this has taken years to get to this stage and will be paid off in November yippee), £1600 on an overdraft (absolute bane of my life, always going over the limit so get charged every month) and £2500 on a credit card (hate this stupid card, needed it for a genuine emergency and now can't pay it off). This is £4900 of general misery (I don't even count the student loan!!).

Now, I've been working in my job for just over 2 and a half years and I joined the pension when I started so have paid, conveniently, at my reckoning about £4900 of my salary into it. This may sound really, really stupid but can I just cancel the pension, withdraw it and pay off my debts with it? It's a public sector Essex County Council pension which I understood was a "good deal" but really I would rather just pay debt now and save the constant cost/charges and re-evaluate my money situation from a blank slate. It's not as simple as this I fear. Has anyone got any advice. (I'm also owed £1880 by my boyfriend but I'm not gonna see this anytime soon....).

Thanks for your time

cte1111

No you can't. Sorry about that. Maybe head over the debtfree wannabe area and do a statement of accounts, so people can help you work out where to cut back and sort out your debts over time.

sheilds

This is DFW board:heart2:

Turtle

You can't get that money back now I'm afraid, not til you draw the pension most likely in very many years.

somethingcorporate

No, and you shouldn't. You are in one of the best pensions you could possibly be in so don't be foolish to come out of it.

With sensible planning and budgeting getting out of such a small amount of debt should be relatively easy (sounds like you have come a long way already!). You will thank yourself when you reach retirement age, I promise you.

Enchilada_2

Sorry, I shall post this somewhere else if it's on the wrong board. Mind you, you all seem to have answered my question anyway thank you (and the answer is what I suspected). I'm gonna have to get someone to explain pensions to me!!!