The Week That Was

Before being awarded the scholarship from TheOrganisation for my degree, I was ‘sponsored’ by the government. We were all clear that it was a convertible loan and were promised numerous times that if we performed well, we could have the loan waived. However, it didn’t turn out that way at all. My friends who obtained first class were still required to pay the government an amount calculated on some percentage of the loan taken. I have not been excluded despite acing my A-Level and was summoned to pay the amount incurred for my A-Level tuition fees and subsistence immediately upon my return from England. All in all, it amounted to slightly over RM20K. All my visits and plea letters for waiver of this loan on reasons that I am currently serving the country had fallen on deaf ears and finally, seeing no way out, I relented and started paying my debt, slowly but surely. After all, the loan is interest-free so why should I rush.

Imagine my surprise when I saw a letter, upon my return from Manila, from the government asking, no, directing, me either to settle the balance of the loan or face legal action. And the payment was due last Saturday. I was speechless and remained so for a few minutes, lost in my thoughts and questions running through my head. I had about a week to either consider paying the debt in full, writing yet another plea letter for me to settle the debt by instalment, or paying some money with the hope that this would shut them up for a while before being served another letter.

After thinking it through, I decided OK, I would pay the balance of the loan as requested. Mind you, the amount outstanding was still quite substantial [didn’t I mention taking my time paying the loan?] but still I thought, maybe I really should sever my ties with this government body once and for all.

And so, I did. And now I’m pretty skint [as if I wasn’t skint to begin with!]. But I like to think that now I’m completely free of them, that I’ve achieved financial independence from them.

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I’m also taking steps to terminate my credit card account. Just found out on Saturday that the annual fee would be due by the 24th of this month or so and if I wanted to proceed with my plan, I would need to settle my outstanding amount [oh boy, more money!], redeem whatever points I have from the rewards catalogue and inform the bank within these two weeks so that it can take the necessary steps to remove me from its mailing list/database or whatever. I spent an hour last Saturday searching for something to purchase that would make it easy for me to settle my outstanding amount by cash [I could issue a cheque but to do that, I need this month’s statement to attach with my cheque and this month’s statement will already charge for the annual fee for the next twelve months and I don’t want that of course. Yes, even terminating credit card requires a strategy]. Thankfully, I managed to buy something, the cost of which when added to my then outstanding amount enabled me to settle my total outstanding amount on Saturday itself, with the bank now owing me 2 sen. Heh.

Now I just need to choose something from the rewards catalogue before I can terminate my credit card/sever my ties with this bank.

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Last but not least, it was my parents’ anniversary yesterday. Happy anniversary dearest Abah and Mummy!