When the letter came, Sonia Wignall didn’t believe it.
Why would she? Her debt was a stress-inducing albatross on her financial health and a stain on her credit rating. And, yes, she owed that $33,000 for a good reason, as she borrowed the money when she’d been forced to cut back on work to care for her dying father. But, really, who was going to parachute into her life and write a check?
The letter had an answer: The check came from ForgiveCo of Fort Collins, Colorado.
In an act that shines a light on the widespread burden of debt, ForgiveCo had purchased her debt — along with the debt of about 8,800 others in metro Atlanta. Then ForgiveCo partnered with California-based financial services company Earnin to pay it all off.
Wignall read the letter. Then she read it again.
“I thought, ‘I can’t believe this,’” said Wignall, who lives in Fayetteville, Georgia. “I thought maybe it was a scam. So, I called the company I owed money toe and they said, ‘No, you have no balance. Zero.’”
Craig Antico, ForgiveCo’s chief executive, said he founded the company in 2021 to induce that sense of delighted disbelief among some of the many millions of Americans living under the weight of debt.