Flying solo

*Robin*

Good morning Diary,

Thank you so much to everyone who has stopped by and commented; it's great to feel so supported, :T

Yesterday was a bit of a failure, in that I still don't know exactly how much I owe on CCs. But I did work out how much money I need to run this house, and the bottom line of that calculation led me to take a very large step indeed:

Council Tax: £222 *
Utilities: £ 85
Insurance: £ 45
TV licence: £ 12
Phone/Net: £ 36
Total: £400

* CT will come down a bit when they apply the single person discount. The Utilities is a 'balanced' payment; I overpay in the summer and it catches up in the winter. Insurance = buildings, contents & CH system.

So I need £100 a week. That's before daft dogs and I go out in the van, I use my mobile, or any of us eat. Van + mobile add £22 a week to my expenses, but I really don't know how much my food budget will be - the last of the visitors who came for the funeral only went home a few days ago (and my son still regularly hoovers up any food he finds lying around, especially fruit for which he has a bottomless appetite - Dallas, that's why I had to resort to calcium & magnesium pills the night before last; no bananas left after DS' latest visit!).

Anyway, as I have no income at all until I've sorted out DH's estate - he was the one with savings & a pension - my situation obviously isn't sustainable. I was self-employed before stopping work to look after DH; my income from that had been falling fast due to the recession so I think it's time for a complete change.

Luckily, there is someone who'd love to rent this house - it's far too big for me now anyway - and my news is that they'll be moving in on October 1st! I'll still have to pay the insurance (interestingly, landlord insurance comes in slightly cheaper than the owner-occupier variety). My personal possessions will be moved to the cottages, and the tenant will be paying the running costs of this place as well as giving me six months' rent in advance.

So that will take the pressure off in one direction, but means the clock is ticking on sorting out DH's estate. Hmm.

Today I've got an appointment with the bank that's holding DH's savings, and then daft dogs and I are going to visit his grave to remove the funeral flowers which will have wilted by now - the other night in Tosco's I found two beautiful bouquets of lilies reduced from £15.50 to 80p - don't know why as they're absolutely gorgeous, so I'll take them to DH. Will be using his walking stick as my leg still isn't right, and Clever Dog can pull me along.

please-let-me-be-lucky

Hi *Robin*.

So sorry to hear about your loss. Hugs .

It must still be very early days for you and I think you are doing marvellously. I'm so pleased to read some positives by the time I got to the end of your thread so far, great news about your new tennant and starting to look at your finances.

You have been given some good advice so far, please keep posting so people can continue to help, a problem shared and all that ....

One step at a time Xx

*Robin*

Hello Diary,

Hi LMBL thanks for dropping by, and the hugs (that's a better icon than the dodgy-huggers! ).
I can see this board could become naughtily time-consuming - especially catching up with all your threads as we get to know each other. ..Am rather looking forward to it; much better than falling into the tv during the long quiet evenings that have become my lot.

Well, I've worked out some more figures: £390 a month - those are the CC payments going out of my a/c ..But I should be able to halve that by the end of the month, getting rid of the one that's charging over 20% interest! :eek:

I can do that because today the postman brought a letter I was happy to read; DH's pension provider has come through and is being much more generous than I was expecting. This is coming to me, not having to go through probate, so I can use the death benefit payment (after sending the funeral director a cheque, of course). I'd much rather get rid of some debt than splash out on a holiday or anything else at the moment.

*Robin*

Hello Diary,

It's such a beautiful day I'm abandoning the paperwork in favour of a long walk with daft dogs. It was getting very depressing as several envelopes contained more bad news, and my attempts to reply to correspondence have failed because, inexplicably, my eight week old printer won't work. I gave it new inks but it wasn't impressed, the ink light still flashes. Aargh. Tempting to just put it in the box and take it back - but not today.

dallas85

*Robin* wrote: »

Hello Diary,

It's such a beautiful day I'm abandoning the paperwork in favour of a long walk with daft dogs. It was getting very depressing as several envelopes contained more bad news, and my attempts to reply to correspondence have failed because, inexplicably, my eight week old printer won't work. I gave it new inks but it wasn't impressed, the ink light still flashes. Aargh. Tempting to just put it in the box and take it back - but not today.

I think printers are responsible for about 25% of stress in this world! They are a total NIGHTMARE!

So pleased to hear that you've had some good news in amongst the bad. Keep going a bit at a time and treat yourself as much as you can on the days you manage to tackle a thing or two.

I hope you had a good day Robin!

mummytogirls

Morning Robin,

Just had a little catch up with your diary. Very sorry to hear about the death of PC .
Well done on opening the letters, that sounds one of the hardest steps for you.

Also sounds like daft dogs are getting you through!! We have one of those too, an 8 year old chocolate labrador who thinks he is one of the kids... well he is really xx

*Robin*

mummytogirls wrote: »

Just had a little catch up with your diary. Very sorry to hear about the death of PC .
Well done on opening the letters, that sounds one of the hardest steps for you.

Hello mummytogirls thank you for dropping by and your kind words. Most of the time I manage by imagining DH is at his flat, or the cottages - just 'somewhere else' rather than gone from my life for ever.. Meanwhile the clock ticks inexorably, and suddenly it's over a month since he passed on. Oh, and I still haven't opened all of the letters so don't deserve your praise.. Yet.

mummytogirls wrote: »

Also sounds like daft dogs are getting you through!! We have one of those too, an 8 year old chocolate labrador who thinks he is one of the kids... well he is really xx

You're right, my daft dogs are my saviours, I wouldn't be without them! Clever Dog has a mate who's a choccy-lab; they have such fun when we meet his owner out walking - zooming off together to put the Fear of Dog into the local rabbit population! Unfortunately the owner is not as delighted as Murphy & Clever Dog when we hove into view, because there's a wide ditch between the path and the rabbits. Clever Dog jumps it but the lab always splashes through - when we call them back he stinks! - so his owner knows that our appearance heralds him having to bath Murphy when they get home.


Am not getting on very well with progressing probate - need to get my head around doing DH's tax return. It is also proving ridiculously hard to open an executor's account for money he has still coming in - must get that sorted out in the next few days.

*Robin*

Yesterday I had to take my own advice: If a task is not going well, do something else that requires attention - generally, by the time the 2nd task is done, the first job will have changed in some way and become easier to tackle.

And so it proved to be. DH's tax return was doing my head in, so I went back to the pile of envelopes and followed Listerbelle's advice:

Listerbelle wrote: »

Here's my tip: if you open the envelopes, discard them and then unfold the correspondence, the pile looks less daunting

Yup, the pile of 'waste' was twice the height of the stuff that needs dealing with, so now the envelopes are all in the recycling, the bank statements have been filed and I have two much smaller piles on my desk: "To do" and "Do these first!"

One of the latter was very urgent - the SO due to be paid to one of my CCs was below the minimum payment this month - which would have lost me the 0% deal :eek: so I sorted that out on-line at once.

I also know how much I owe: £13,268 on my cards, plus an appalling £5,600 tax bill :eek: The latter is due to a huge mistake I made last year, according to HMRC.

That tax bill has now become problem one but it can wait as the final account only dropped onto the door-mat ten minutes ago - in fact it may be worth investing in professional advice on that as I'm still not confident in my figures.

One thing is for sure; I won't be going shopping again until daft dogs and I have eaten everything in stock (which is quite a lot)!

dallas85

amazing Robin! Although it's scary, it's also much easier to know how much you owe so you can begin to tackle it psychologically.

you're doing amazingly - an inspiration!

*Robin*

dallas85 wrote: »

you're doing amazingly - an inspiration!

Thank you, but I'm not!
..Was just reading the latest entries in 3Dogs' thread while having a late breakfast, and came across her comment about bereavement allowance - ???

After a horrendously expensive half hour 0845 premium rate call to our dear government's Jobcentre Plus "helpline" [haha - passed to seven different people :eek: - am going to claim it.

Won't pay the tax bill, but will help. They want to take with one hand; I'll claim off the other.

Now off to try and open that bank account, hopefully; third time lucky?