Back in the black before baby

LittleMissKitty

Dammit. there I was having a good day and along comes the taxman to ruin it all. :mad: Apparently I owe tax credits £1500 and if I don't sort it out by 8pm tomorrow then they'll take me to court. Nice for the prior warning! I've already had two overpayments (which actually only happened on paper - we never got the cash!) written off and this one even went to our MP but they've dug their heels in. I won't even begin to go into the inconsistancies in their records or their responses but I've run out of energy to fight anymore because I seem completely incapable of getting through to them quite how much they've stuffed this up and it's not worth the stress for me and the kids. Most of their figures are imaginary! :mad::mad::mad:

So tomorrow I'm getting DH to call and set up a DD for £40 a month for the next 3 years to pay the b*st*rd thing off and make it go away

I can't believe that since having I started this diary I've actually managed to ADD to my overall debt by close to £5k :wall:

Pinky15

Oh Poor you - they have messed up big time havent they. I know when something happens like that is stresses things big time and you really dont need it at the mo! They really are useless gits arent they!
Try not to let them get to you, have some more choccie (eggs? lol) and a long soak.:):)

Pinky15

Just thought I would pop by and say Hi:j - hope you are ok?

LittleMissKitty

You wouldn't believe the computer problems I've had in the last month! First the laptop keyboard went, then the replacement didn't work, then we ordered an adapter which never turned up and then I eventually decided to get the desktop PC internet enabled and had to spend two days updating it so Microsoft would stop randomly shutting it down to 'install critical updates'. So I FINALLY have internet access successfully combined with a working keyboard, I feel so free! :j

Anyway, sorry to those of you who were actually popping in to see how I was doing, I do appreciate it, I'm just sorry I haven't updated.
March wasn't our most MSE ever. I was pretty prepared to not get anywhere this month but must say I was secretly hoping to do better than I actually managed . We had quite a bit to fork out for. Car insurance was due and I hadn't been expecting it as I was sure we'd paid 12 months in September but I was apparently wrong. That was £109. Then it was my Mums 50th which, obviously, I had been expecting. Myself, brother and Dad went all in for a new DSLR camera for her. Bro and I put in £100 each, then I was left in charge of organising a 'surprise family meal' complete with cake. The 'cake and decorations' part of organising the meal meant I had to go to a supermarket. I do NOT do well in supermarkets, especially big ones that sell cute kids clothes. So I ended up spending just shy of £100 on new clothes for the kids. I don't feel too bad about it as mostly it was stuff they needed (i.e new pyjamas and underwear) but I did slip a couple of ABSOLUTELY NECCESSARY outfits in there, 1 for each of the kids. The cake and decorations probably set us back another £30odd but I decorated the cake myself and it looked lovely, even if I do say so myself.

After all of that I was rather resigned to not knocking much off the OD. That weekend we were also meant to have the tree moved but it rained so the guys called and cancelled . This resulted in me, rather concerned that the tree was now in bud, calling around friends and begging for help in return for cookies. Surprisingly a friend and my Dad agreed! (Mugs) so they all spent the following Saturday digging a crater in the front garden to remove the absolutely huge rootball. It took the three of them about 6 hours in total. We decided they deserved more than cookies (which we'd baked with the kids and were rather akin to rocks) so we went and got burgers for everyone which came in at £30. Damn site cheaper than the £200 it would have cost to hire the labour for the day :T

DH actually got up and went into work voluntarilly at 8am on the Sunday (I worry about him occasionally ) and planned to pick up some mulch from the garden centre on his way home. However, upon arriving at the garden centre he decided it felt apparently 'wrong' to be at a garden centre without me so came and got me and the kids and we all went for a little browse together...... except the 'browse' turned into more of a 'shop'. We spent just under £100 (again) on plants (and mulch, which we remembered at the end!) Again, I'm not kicking myself over this as, having moved the tree into the back garden, we needed to plant the borders up and we had NO plants at all. We'd have had to factor in a big plant shop in the near future anyway, or cope with yet another year of having an unusable garden, which wasn't an option I was going to go with .

So, the sum total recovered from the overdraft this month? Around £38, :rotfl:. Still, it's heading in the right direction and this month we're going to suffer for last months splurges. But at least the garden will look nice

Pinky15

Hey nice to see you back Miss Kitty! Glad you go the computer probs sorted I hate the things thankgoodness DH is good with them as I havent a clue.;)
Also we too had loads of bills come in which sappe my extra money, house & car insurance, tax, swimming lessons and I need oil next month typical eh? So I know how hard ot is when things keep popping up.
£38 is def going the right way - the overdraft it going down not up which is always a good thing!
Glad your mum had a nice bd DH dad just celebrated a big onetoo so luckily had budgetted for that already.
Keep up the good work you will get there:):)

LittleMissKitty

There's always something isn't there Pinky! Every month there seems to be a birthday or an unexpected bill just to muck the budgets up!

Well the car insurance was due out today - £31.90, and it hasn't been debitted. I hate it when the banks muck about with days, I'm obsessive to the point of OCD when it comes to knowing where my money is and the combination of banks not taking DD's when they're due and our new bank account not showing a real-time statement is not doing me any favours. On the plus side the money is just sitting there waiting to come out so it's not going to get us charged or anything.

It was Boo's 5th birthday on Saturday _party_ and we had a family day out, complete with Grandparents. We took her to the Spectrum Centre in Guildford and spent the morning in the leisure pool, had a junk food lunch (which was really quite hideous) and then went bowling afterwards before driving back to my parents for a present opening session and cake. And I managed to keep the entire thing within my ebay budget :j(thanks to my Dad paying for lunch) I'm very very proud as this is the first time I've not just dived into the current account to cover an 'event'. In all presents, swimming (for 4 adults and 3 kids), bowling and cake came to about £180 which would have seriously hurt my OD plans so I'm a very happy bunny

Other, rather more dull, spends this weekend were filling the car up for the birthday trip (£50ish) and the weekly shop. Normally I get the shopping delivered on a Monday. It averages about £65 including delivery. This week we were planning on having the first BBQ of the year in our nearly acceptable garden so we decided to pop out first thing on Sunday and get some BBQtype food and charcoal and the weekly shop seemed a good idea at the time (despite the fact that our local shop is a Sainsburys which is astronomically more expensive than my average Asda delivery). I must've sounded like a real misery, I kept pointed at stuff and exclaiming at DH that is was half that price from Asda . We did buy the bare minimum that we thought we could get away with but I was dreading actually getting the the till. I even ended up going back just before we got to the check-out and putting back a £1 arctic roll I was going to buy us as a treat for the kids being good because I was in mega-MSE mode. DH was really good and only bought BBQ meat that he could see was on offer (having said that it was Sainsbury's fancy 'Taste the difference' sausages - bless him, he tries ) I was a very happy bunny to discover that the whole lot came in just shy of £52 :beer:. I think some of it is down to the fact that it's still the easter holidays so I don't have to get that special 'lunch-box' food for Boo and I have a feeling that we may be really stretching ourselves to find food at the end of the week but I can live on fresh air left to my own devices and there's bound to be something edible hiding at the back of the cupboard that we haven't noticed so we'll cope.

LittleMissKitty

Car insurance finally came out which is good. I hate the way it shows on the account though. It's been taken out of the 'available balance' but still not showing in the 'account balance'. I undertand not showing and I understand showing everywhere but showing in one row and not on the next is just weird and confusing. The sooner I get the new First Direct account open the sooner I can enjoy sending A&L a 'shove it where the sun don't shine' letter! :rotfl:

Choc-addict

Hi there,

Just finished reading you diary and throughly enjoyed it! Sorry that you had one thing after another, main thing is that you know what you want to do and are thinking in the MSE way

Have subscribed so looking forward to some more posts !! x

LittleMissKitty

Hi Choc-addict :wave: always nice to hear that someone's reading my strange ramblings.

I decided to close my A & L accounts last night (DH's are still open until we get the transfer to 1st Direct sorted) and was expecting a fight on the phone or, at the very least, some remarks about 'opening it for the £100'. In the end it took me all of about 3 minutes and the (rather bored sounding) bloke on the end of the phone just replied with 'ok, I'll close them today'. I've checked on line and they're all showing as unavailable so it looks like that's that! I must admit to feeling rather deflated after not getting to rant a bit. Maybe I'll save it all up for the tax credit people next time they stuff up

On the subject of tax credits I got a letter from them yesterday morning about my 'renewal pack'. *RANT ALERT* I'm thinking this has probably been triggered by us finally agreeing to pay them back the overpayment from 5 years ago. It's specifically about 'helping' me with my renewal because some people apparently 'find the process confusing'. The problem here is it's not ME that finds it confusing - it's THEM! I have never EVER gotten anything wrong and call up the moment something changes to update our details and yet they've a) failled to even send me a renewal pack in the past and then cancelled my claim because they never recieved it back DESPITE me calling at least every couple of months in the interim to ensure they had the correct information b) incorrectly entered my income details REPEATEDLY and then claimed they never received my letter with the details on (so what exactly prompted them to change the amount?!) and c) Got my childs name wrong when writing back to fight their corner with my MP! And that's just the tip of the iceberg! However I now have to call their 'special number' so that their 'specialist advisor' can talk me through each and every detail of the information I give them. They already have my end of tax year earnings and DH's employment details so it's gonna be a pretty short phone call anyway thank God. Grrrr!

Kitty x

Choc-addict

I love ramblings.....i'm the same. It always makes sense in my head when i'm writing it down but sometimes I read back and think....why would anyone want to know any of this.....that said it's me and I ramble regularly so keep going, I enjoy it :rotfl:

Tax credits are renound for being bad, I work in the public sector (not for them!) but often have to use their services for various purposes with my clients and lets just say not that great and that's from an internal customers point of view :eek:

:j to closing the A&L accounts - are they bad then? My Dad banks with them but so far they've been pretty good for him. I tend to deal with his financial side, somehow i've been better at sorting him than myself....erm something not quite right there :think:

Anyhow, before I start rambling away on your diary I shall say have a good day and see you later!