Throw away because humiliation. Also, a long, complicated story I'm going to try to make very short and sweet. ... So, about 10-11 years ago a cousin of mine, a successful attorney, promised me to pay for my college. As long as my grades were exceptional and classes were attended he would pay for the whole thing. Everything. It was agreed in writing, etc, etc. He was my CO-signer. He did not want to be the sole note holder in case I screwed the pooch and failed out. I had skin in the game in his mind. I did as was told; had a GPA of 3.8+, perfect attendance, lots of awards, voted by the class as the most likely to succeed, the whole lot... I did exceptionally well.
During this time my cousin encouraged me to retrieve as much loan money as I could, federally and privately. "It will be the cheapest money you can ever get and I'll be paying it back anyway." Who could argue with that? I knew I would be a success so I wasn't worried. I'm would guessing total loans to be appx $80k. This covered all tuition, room and board, and literally any other expense I had through school and about the first six months after graduation. Seemed like a good situation. I had about $10k in debt otherwise.. A credit card, a car, a small personal loan, nothing unmanageable.
As soon as my deferment was over after school, the phone calls started coming in for loan payments. When I confronted my cousin he basically denied that he ever agreed to pay for anything. Remember how I had this all in writing? Well, 2007/2008 hit everyone hard. My immediate family suffered a four volume novel of bullshit that would take hours upon hours to read, let alone type. Let it suffice to say that paying these student loans was not only impossible but not even close to the middle of the list of my family's worries (health, legal, financial, you name it...). All the e-mails we had, all the paperwork between us, everything was lost. Domains weren't paid, multiple business office moves left paperwork behind, foreclosures and property loss basically decimated any information myself or my family had about this.
This required that I go home to my family and help. It was a total mess. I stopped paying my bills. Well, all debts. I just became a cash person. Didn't answer a call from a number I didn't know, ignored bill collectors in the mail... Just stopped having anything to do with the credit system.
Ten years passed. Life is different. I've found success somehow without credit at all but now it's time to grow up. No more bullshit, right? It's time to address my issues. My girlfriend and I want to rent an apartment, after all, and maybe even one day buy a house, yadda yadda yadda. It's time to check the dreaded credit score. I visit CreditKarma, enter my information, to find out that my credit life is 17 months and my credit score is 762. SEVEN HUNDRED SIXTY TWO. The only debt I have is $377 for a capital one card that I applied for, and was surprisingly approved for, on a whim.
How is this possible? My father and I share a first name and last name but we obviously have different SSNs and I would imagine that he has more than $377 worth of debt.
I am truly dumbfounded. How is this possible? Am I... Am I in the clear, somehow? Did everyone just give up on me and drop all my records? I still receive calls from numbers I don't recognize and when I google those numbers they show up as creditors... What is going on here? https://imgur.com/3LYpRJg https://imgur.com/LZLXFBS
What do I do now?
Submitted November 13, 2018 at 12:48AM by cleanrecordbuthow https://ift.tt/2z5KlaC
