Live positive

Polk

A tale of two bean tins.

so yesterday I took a tin of beans and some bread to work for lunch. The boss has had a tin of his own in the cupboard for a couple of weeks now. Come lunchtime I sorted my lunch out, chilled out and just tried to relax a bit. After lunch I nipped out into the yard to check out some new trucks. when I came back into the office, the boss came out of the kitchen proudly bearing two plates of beans on toast.
'I was never going to eat a whole tin of beans on my own' He proudly declared and plonked one plate on my desk.....
So, a tin and a half of beans later, plus four slices of bread I spent the rest of the afternoon struggling to stay awake. Maybe I'm too polite in refusing the food but I can't see it go to waste.
I had fruit yesterday evening to compensate so I don't feel too bad about it.

In other news, depression and anxiety have had me fully in their grip for the past week. It's been a real struggle - even posting on here was impossible. I'm reading an interesting book that is really helping - Zen and the art of running. chock full of good stuff which applies to every situation you find yourself in.

I'm a bit worried about Step Change today and I need to ring them. I discovered a credit card that I had completely forgotten about yesterday. It's one that I had squirrelled away in my wallet for emergencies only, luckily the balance is zero on it. So I immediately cancelled it and called Step Change to let them know what had happened (honesty being the best policy)
While I was on the phone to them, I asked how my DRO application was proceeding since I hadn't heard anything. All the letters have been sent to my creditors but I had heard nothing from anyone. I was told that I still needed to send my paperwork back.
It was sent recorded delivery last week and I had confirmation that it had been delivered the next day. I told Step Change this only to be told that they had a backlog on and my paperwork was probably waiting to be processed.

I will be ringing them again today - I am damned close to the £15K limit for a DRO and I am incredibly worried that this delay may cause me to go over it if my creditors refuse to stop adding charges and interest.

If this fails because of a backlog at Step Change, I will not be amongst the happiest bunnies currently infesting this sceptred isle.

Polk

so then. step change rang me.

because of my water bill my debt is over £15K by £50. utterly ridiculous.
I simply do not see how a water bill which I am paying by DD can be considered a debt!!!

so that had me fuming. then they rang me back - the bill starts on 01/04. So that means that the debt doesn't count until then. So I am actually under £15K as long as the paperwork is submitted and the fee paid for the DRO by the end of this week! GAH!
Oh and their system has automatically sent me a letter already telling me I don't qualify. I should ignore that apparently.

I know they work very hard at Step Change and work volumes are high right now but this really isn't helping my mental state!

I didn't want to sleep tonight anyway - sleep is so overated

Polk

So I get in to work an hour early this morning because, of course, I'm so enthusiastic about life that I woke up at 0300 and couldn't get back to sleep.

My boss was in the office already and the first thing he does is spring a SURPRISE APPRAISAL on me. delightful. just what I need after a night of no sleep, worrying about the fun and games Step Change are having with me at the moment.

and then I realised..... if he gives me a pay rise that could shaft my DRO going through.....

so I'm currently in a very odd position (in a minute I'll sit properly at my desk but until then you'll just have to put up with it. b'dum tish!)

I might have to refuse the pay rise. what an odd position to be in.

Polk

Ok so.....

got the letters from step change. One I should ignore telling me I don't qualify and then one sent out immediately after that telling me that I DO qualify for the DRO. great. sorted.
also got a letter from MBNA in response to the letter I sent them.
Now I will say - I like MBNA's customer service, in all of my dealings with them they have always been very flexible - last year I missed a payment purely by mistake. When I phoned them and explained what had happened they sorted it all out with a minimum of fuss and even refunded the charges. apart from that one mistake (thought I had paid and I hadn't) I have never missed a payment with them.
Even the letter I have received is worded very nicely - they accept what I am telling them and are happy for me to make reduced payments. Even they way they tell you that the card is now cancelled is nice!

Don't get me wrong - I still know that they are a company dedicated to making money out of you borrowing from them. I just like how they go about it I suppose.
Now they are saying that since I have broken the credit agreement a default will automatically be added to my credit file - I will check this with Step Change but it doesn't surprise me.

In other news, at work our OCRS score went to Green on Traffic and Roadworthiness.
for those of you that don't know what this is - Every company that runs trucks over 3.5t in the UK has to have an Operators Licence. This is heavily monitored by VOSA (now called the DVSA).
They score you on how well behaved your drivers are and how well maintained your trucks are. The score runs from Green to Amber to Red - I won't bore you with how that is calculated.

Basically, the higher your score (Amber and Red), the more likely it is that your vehicles will be stopped and checked by VOSA. since we are now a Green operator on both scores, we are less likely to be stopped.
this is very very very good and means that my frazzled mind may allow me an extra 30 minutes of sleep. The boss is very happy too.

I may even feel relaxed enough to paint some models tonight.....
narp! got to get a credit report from Experian and finish off cancelling direct debits!

killerpeaty

Hey, you seem like you are making great steps.

I have some friends who live or work in Bracknell and they find it really quite nice. Plus it's going to be renovated soon isn't it?

Good luck! I'll be watching.

in_need_of_direction

Well done on what you've managed. Hopefully the green rating will take some pressure off work wise.

Polk

CALAMITY AND DISASTER!

well not quite.....

so I'm still waiting on the Experian Credit Report showing up. I'm stuck at work all day so there's no chance of me getting home to see if it has arrived in the post today.

So that's the 1st of April deadline missed. great.
so now I have to take into account the water bill for the year because it's classed as a debt. Does anyone else find this patently ridiculous? why should a water bill be treated as a debt when Council Tax, TV Licence, Electricity etc are not?

So I've told Step Change and I will be recalculating things so that I am totally up to date. Barring major disasters, this only puts me over by £51 or so. this is not the end of the world, just a setback. a very annoying one partially because I don't think a water bill should treated any differently to any other bill.

Live and learn.

Depression has had me fully in its grip this weekend - Saturday was ok, but yesterday was a complete write off. I simply could not get motivated to do anything and so ended up spending the day surfing t'intarwebnet watching random videos and generally finding myself in some odd, far flung reaches. All I can say is that there are some extremely odd but happy people out there. Odd because of the things they choose to put online. Happy because the internet allows them the freedom to express themselves.
It was nothing violent, gruesome or pr0nographic mind, just...... odd.

In a way it actually helps because it makes me realise that I am actually quite sane when compared to some of the things some people get up to these days.

enough of that.
so todays target - pay car insurance, contents insurance, check everything else is paid. Iron at least one garment tonight.
Get up to date balances and work out how far over the £15K limit I am because of the @#&*$%# water bill, and then work out how to get back under.

Polk

Checking in....

Depression has had me properly down since my last post. It's been a struggle even to get out of bed in the morning. Getting anything done at all has been an uphill battle. This includes mundane tasks, even now I can feel the airing cupboard staring at me accusingly as it's full of un-ironed clothes.
Work has continued to be insanely busy with tons of pressure. BUT. I think I have inadvertantly made a suggestion which my boss is acting upon.
Again I'll spare you the boring details, but suffice to say that on the back of something or other happening I started typing up some ideas on how to make things function more smoothly and avoid a lot of the problems we always seem to get in the run up to the projects starting each year.
Clearly I needed to get something off my chest about it since it turned into a full page of merciless identification of problems and ideas on how to sort them. It was horribly blunt, brutal in the analysis and intentionally frank in the resolution, proposed or otherwise.

My boss read it and told me he likes what I put. I tried to explain but he has decided that I have done a good thing. oops.

Anyway. The Experian report finally turned up on Friday so I sent that off to Step Change immediately. Then I had to ring them to delay matters since the landlord hasn't given me the correct account details so I can't pay my rent this month yet. (silly sausage that I am, I deleted the standing order without writing the details down first)
so, Step Change are waiting on me making sure that no more payments on anything are coming out of the old account before I give them the green light on the DRO.
The good thing is that even with the *#@$**&#@ Water bill being counted, I am still under the £15k limit. By £50. so I need to be extra careful this month.

Luckily I was asked to help on an instruction course for Drivers last week so that's an extra £150 in my back pocket which gives me a bit more leeway.
Once I am sorted, any money I earn this way will either go off the debt (depending on how the DRO works) or go into my account to give me a nice buffer. If I reach £1000 with that then I will start using it for other purposes. the problem is that these courses are not regular so I cannot count upon them to give me a regular bit of extra income. Of course, this all depends on the DRO and how it works - I'm not going to lie to anyone about my income since I know that could have a severe effect.
I'll also be interested to see what the taxman leaves me this month. I got royally shafted in the last tax year because, back in 2010, I had three jobs, and one of the companysI worked for was incompetent enough to tell the tax man that I worked for them for the whole year rather than just two months. Despite my best efforts to the contrary, I have been unable to prove what I earned that year because the folder containing my payslips and P60's got lost. (sneaking suspicion the ex binned them during our breakup). Two of the companys are no longer trading as well which doesn't help. So, the taxman decided that I owed him approx £1000 in tax and I had to pay it over the year since I had nothing spare when the bill hit my doorstep. I'll always hold HMRC in high regard - especially for the way in which any letter to me involved me paying them more and any letter to the ex usually involved a cheque to give her a refund.

I shall not be bitter. I just wish HMRC could be a bit more sympathetic towards me like they appear to be with quite a few other people. Especially the rich ones who appear to get away with not paying any tax at all, or far less than the tax I have to pay.

onwards and upwards.
target:

1) Iron!
2) Paint models
3) Bake a cake
4) cook something awesome for dinner that I can either freeze for later or enjoy this evening.
5) peppers.


which reminds me - I need to sort out the tubs for the tomatos I planted at the weekend. and work out where I'm going to put the runner beans. One corner of the garden seems a good idea, but I also quite like the idea of having them distributed in amongst the other plants since they do put out lovely flowers.
note to self: water everything! and speak to the water board about getting a water metre because you haven't done it yet!

Polk

I've not been on here for a while.

I thought that I couldn't be any further in the grip of depression than I was the last time I posted. How wrong I was!
I have this thing - I know something needs doing but there is this really odd 'thing' in my head that prevents me doing it. Almost as if the very act of doing whatever it is simply cannot be done. Even something as simple as commanding the muscles to move, to reach out and pick something up.
The voice in my head just says 'What's the point?' and the simple becomes impossible.

I do not understand this, I do not like it. It means that I am failing at work and my home is a tip.

Positives (which is what we all need to focus on)
I'm alive
I have my son
I still appear to have a G/f who is still interested in me
I'm not living in Slough
I'm doing something about my debt
We're going to win the world cup this summer

Ok maybe not the last one.....

so then. the debt.
My Debt Relief Order has been granted.
this is a positive.
But I am not entirely happy. Which is silly but I think there is a good reason for it.
You see, during the planning of this it became apparent that I needed to get it all done before April otherwise my water bill would be considered part of the debt. I still don't agree that the water bill should be any part of the debt - it's no different than Electricity or Gas.
anyway, I missed the deadline because I simply did not have any money spare to pay for the DRO. A source of great frustration.
What I did not realise (and Step Change did not make this crystal clear) is that the water bill is written off. So the water company are treated in the same way as the credit card companies. They told me that it was taken into account, but they did not tell me that it would be written off.
I don't actually think this is fair - I always paid my water bill on time and I don't see why Thames Water should suffer. I am now in a position where I feel that I should actually apologise to them because it is my fault that this happened and they are suffering because of it. Not only that, I'm worried that they will be reluctant to deal with me in future because of this.

So that's that. I should be walking away thanking my lucky stars this has happened.

But.... suddenly a tiny snagette appears!

New tax year, new threshold applies to everyone.
Back in 2010, I worked several jobs. One of the company's I worked for decided to tell the tax man I worked for them for the whole year. So the taxman wrote to me to tell me that I had not paid the correct tax and so was going to stitch me for a grand extra in the 2013-14 tax year. I have never been able to prove that this was wrong since the company in question no longer trades and the ex binned my old P46's and payslips when we split up.
Soooooo new tax year, the taxman is no longer stitching me.
which means I'm getting more in my pocket. which means the budget I submitted for the DRO is no longer accurate. I just paid the fee and just had it granted.

I have no idea what to do. the literature with the DRO is clear - I have to tell them if my financial circumstances change. but if I tell them this then it could mean the DRO fails and I'm back to square one but with defaults on all my cards since I have been paying reduced amounts since starting with Step Change.
I really could do with some advice on this one I have no clue what to do.

in_need_of_direction

I've never been in dmp so can't offer any help. I have been where I'm too frightened of the world to get out of bed in case I screw up something else. The one thing I cling to is that depression does shift. It's a nightmare but there are breaks from it and that's what I try to focus on. A kind of "this too shall pass". One of my coping things is to do something which may not be on my to do list but that is straightforward. For me, it tends to be making soup. This may go to the freezer but at least it's something that's hard to get wrong so I will have done something. Take care and don't ask too much of yourself right now.