My Brush with Bankruptcy

By: Anne Stockwell

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August 23, 2005

I was hearing today about the unintended consequences of the new bankruptcy bill, which becomes law in October. Instead of fewer applications, the government is fielding more. There’s a bankruptcy rush, in fact. When I hear that, I get swallowed in memories of my own brush with bankruptcy.

A lot of the bankruptcies now are about medical bills, which have gone crazy and are apparently going to stay that way unless the country coughs up some unlikely political changes. But my bankruptcy—my intended bankruptcy, anyway—was over my very expensive education. Impractical education, I might as well add.

I went to film school, a top film school, a “name” film school. An exorbitantly expensive film school. Like everybody else in my class, except the heirs to various fortunes, I paid the freight with student loans. I didn’t do this lightly. I saw it as a high-stakes gamble. Throughout my years in school, I had a low-level emotional migraine about what was going to happen if I didn’t succeed in the film business. I felt worse on the rare occasions when I acknowledged to myself that I had no idea what success in the film business, for me, might be.

Back home they say you’ve just got to “keep on keeping on,” no matter how confusing the way ahead. And once I graduated and moved out to Hollywood, that’s what I did, delaying my loan payments, looking for temp work, getting fired from entry-level positions, soaking up the abundant literature of “I was sleeping in my car before Hollywood discovered me and made me a millionaire.”

I had no idea how this loan business worked and what my rights were. I got dizzy every time I tried to read the fine print on the form letters the loan company sent. I wrote sunny and completely fictional letters to my family. Everything was fine.

Then came the form letter from the loan company that said “pay up or else.” I couldn’t think of even one more maneuver. I finally picked up the phone and called home.

I’m pretty sure I cried. I’m going to have to go bankrupt! In my family, this is not something you do. I’d just as soon have said, I’m thinking of taking up cannibalism. But there was relief, too, because I’d finally said it. It was finally out there.

A few days later I got a call from my brother, just out of school with his MBA. He came to see me and could not have been kinder or more empathetic. He had come up with a repayment plan for me. Along with each of my parents, he would shoulder my debt, contributing monthly payments — for years —until I was in the clear. The only condition came late in our conversation. In return for this bail-out, I would join the regular work world, get a nine-to-five job, and put away the dreams of fame and fortune.

This was not in any way expressed unkindly. And believe me, from where I sat, it seemed completely reasonable. I said yes.

Then I got back home and told the whole story. My partner said, Absolutely not. Your education is not a mistake and your dreams are not unfounded. Good things are going to happen to you.

I hardly felt strong enough to do it, but I called back and said thanks, but no thanks.

And my partner was right. In the years that followed, good things did happen. I found not just one way, but many ways, to get financially on track. Now I still pay that loan, and I never think about it.

I’m not comparing myself to people declaring bankruptcy right now, people faced with six-digit medical bills. I can’t believe that there’s shame in making it possible to begin again when someone is under a burden far beyond what any of us could really pay.

But for me, bankruptcy was the road not traveled. A good thing, too, because even when I called my family in a panic, I still didn’t know the facts. You can’t go bankrupt on a student loan anyway.

Clueless? Sure. About money and the law. But even back in the day, someone believed I could make good anyway. That’s what helped me most of all.

Source

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moneypants

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