More pension stuff but it might help you. I work heavily in pensions and I used to work in insolvency. The knowledge I have in pensions helped significantly with insolvency. I am going to share some of the techniques used to resolve debt problems using pensions. Paying off debts when you have a pension. If you have a pension you can use pension early release to pay off outstanding debts in the UK they have an option to release pension funds early called Income Drawdown, which can be used to pay off debts. There are other types of pension early release but they are likely to take pension tax relief away from the person. Using pension funds to replace the debt. Some pension schemes allow pension savers to use the funds to fund certain activities. In the UK there is a pension scheme called a Small Self Administered Scheme SSAS, which can be used by company directors to invest in their business. The funds they have in their pensions can be used to invest in their corporation, enabling a self funding process through using their own pension schemes. This can provide funding for business entities without having to borrow from elsewhere or issuing more shares or it can be used to pay off existing debts. Student Debts. The problem with student debt is it is pretty much unsecured debt because most students don't have much when they start working. This means if there is a default it is likely to be a hard default. They can get round this by offering creditors' agreements to offer a lower more affordable debt repayment scheme. This reduces the loss of debt to the bank and seems like a reasonable option to help the debtors' out. There is a technique they can use, which I used to recommend to people when I worked in insolvency. Yes yet again it is pension related but it usually works, at least in the UK. When you pay into a pension your pension scheme is usually protected against insolvency. You could threaten the organisation who lent you money that you will put your possessions into a pension unless they give you a creditors' agreements. The results varied from being able to stop the interest rate being charged or interest payment or instalment payment holidays to reductions in the debt needing to be repaid. Either way the threat of protecting assets by putting them into pensions worked as leverage to make the debt more manageable or to prevent the interest from increasing.