Early discharge!! & my story

rastica

WOW unexpectedly amazing day... I was due for automatic discharge in early June and just went to the IS register to check what exact date it was, and found out I had been discharged early without realizing it! It is something my OR had told me they were going to try and do for me but said they'd be in touch if it went through and I didn't hear back from them. Turns out I've been discharged since mid-March!!!!!!

I'm honestly crying with relief, I'm so grateful to this board as it has been the wealth of information that has kept me sane by making me feel like I could take control of/understand the process, rather than just worrying about what was happening on the court/OR side. I was getting hopeful but nervous about my discharge just because 'you never know' - so to find out I'm completely free now feels so strange...

I've been in huge debt since I was 17 - student loans circa £25k that I signed up to before knowing anything about money and debt, with no financial education or role model. I can't tell you the psychological effect it had - take a kid from a really poor background and give them loads of money and debt before they understand it and you will promptly make money feel like a completely abstract concept. I've spent the last 12 years ever since just ignoring the reality of debt because it seemed so absurd in the first place, and ducking out of bills, adding more debt etc because my initial loan felt so impossibly big that I didn't care what else was piled on - I ended up with around £60k worth.

I grew up in a single parent family where money was a constant fluid and disappearing thing - we were on the dole through most of my upbringing and it seemed like money was something that somehow just worked out, you'd skip paying the electricity in order to pay the gas before it was cut off, you'd use the food money to pay phone bill, then you'd get an extra £200 from somewhere, somehow and pay everything back at the nick of time before the next round started... It was something that was a constant high stress but just a kind of background reality that you dealt with. But we never had huge debt, just living hand-to-mouth kind of thing, and so when I found myself with so much of it all of a sudden with the student loans it hit hard that it wouldn't just work out. It sent me off the rails, I had no idea how to handle it psychologically. I hated to have it looming over my head so just ignored money altogether and treated it like something that was just going to be stressful but eventually work itself out.

Anyway long story but I'm just so relieved now to have a clean slate in order that I can finally teach myself about money and finances properly, without feeling like I was already losing that game.

THANK YOU so much to everyone on this board for contributing what you do. I really would have been ill without a place like this to turn to, even just to lurk around and read people's stories, but also when I had questions you made me feel so much more secure and in control.

I feel so weird!! And happy, but strange... debt free is something I've never felt in my adult life... I'm so looking forward to it with huge relief.

IF

Hi rastica, Brilliant news on your ED and I love good news on here.
Onwards and Upwards now :beer:

Best wishes
If...x

rastica

BTW I grew up in Canada, I know the student loan/tuition situation is different here, in case my story seems odd at parts. But it made me sad recently with the tuition fee hikes that students here will soon be in the same situation I was. I really hope they will give kids from low-income families some financial education and training before they hand them over huge student loans... Completely irresponsible otherwise. I wish someone had taught me consistently and from a young age how to handle money, both financially and psychologically - or else never given me a student loan to begin with, at that young age!

tigerfeet2006

Well done on getting through it all and coming out the other side.

Try and get a print out of your discharge notice ready for the clean up. It will disapear 3 months after. If you can't then ask your OR if s/he would be kind enough to write you a letter. Some OR's will charge for this, some won't. You need this for doing the credit file clean up when you are ready.