Drifting in a Sea of Debt

BettyBones

Life has a habit of throwing you a curve ball when you think you're bimbling along quite nicely and yesterday I received one, courtesy of the tax man. I received a lovely letter informing me that I had neglected to put a small amount of income on my tax return (I used to be self-employed) and as a result I now owe £918.80 in unpaid tax. Gordon Bennett! This would wipe out my emergency/holiday fund

Once I'd got over the shock I rang HMRC and rather than just accept that I should have included the extra income and pay the £918.80 I asked if they could quickly run through the rest of my form to see if I had got anything else wrong. Turns out I had put my expenses in the wrong box too and moving them to the right box would reduce my tax liability to just £29.60. Phew! Now that's a number I can live with. I have to send them copies of my expenses before they'll move it and it doesn't mean that they won't still impose a penalty on me but fingers crossed they will take pity on me, bill me for £29.60 and let me off the penalty. I think they realised on the phone that I'm stupid rather than fraudulent but I'll have to wait and see...

On a happier note, £50 transferred to my emergency/holiday fund this week, 3 NSD's and a weekend looming large that's promising to be full of sunshine. Happy days! I shall be watching the footie tomorrow and then packing on Sunday as I'm off to the West country for a few days on Monday. It's a work trip so all accommodation, food and travel paid for which means more NSD's for me next week and a break from the household chores. Yippeee!!!!

Have a great weekend everybody xx

BettyBones

I've been so busy with work and stuff this week that I've totally lost track of my finances. :eek: I have a feeling I've spent more on my Tesc0 CC than my expenses will cover and I definitely know I've gone over budget on things like food, petrol and birthday presents for DS. And even though I've been away for most of the week and I've worked all this weekend I don't think I've had one NSD. Grrr! Totally rubbish debt busting week!!

Orange_Ena

Glad the tax thing righted itself, what a massive relief

Get back on track, you can do it. A new week is right around the corner. Forget that, tomorrow is a new day! We all have blips along the way but all is not lost, just jump staight back on that money saving wagon Think of Tom in his sailors uniform :D

BettyBones

Hahaha! Thanks Ena, that did make me laugh! I've been off work sick all week and pretty much corpsed on the couch which, although extremely frustrating, has actually meant that my wrongs have pretty much been righted.

Being so ill has meant that I haven't been able to travel anywhere so haven't had to buy petrol, haven't had an appetite so haven't had to food shop and haven't been out so haven't spent a penny all week :rotfl: I still feel pants so next week will probably be much of the same meaning all in all I'll probably end the month just £50 or so over budget. That I can live with.

Good news this week is that another £130 was paid off my tax credit debt, £30 off my Cap 1 cc, £50 off my S@ntander CC and by next Friday I should have enough in my savings/emergency fund to pay off the outstanding £1300 or so on the S@ntander CC altogether. I'm so looking forward to that :j

joeyjimbles

Well done, and I hope you feel better soon. And great news if you can pay off your CC - even at the expense of your emergency fund, you can then start again to build that up safe in the knowledge that whatever else happens that particular debt won't be nibbling at it.

BettyBones

Thanks Joey Once the S@ntander CC is paid off next week I'll start to build the fund back up with money that will go towards paying off the H@lifax CC1 balance in December. As long as no emergency arises between now and then that is. Fingers crossed

Today i felt a bit better so I managed to spend the day with DS. It's his birthday today and this morning we popped into Tesc0 to get a dvd he wanted. I boosted a £5 Clubcard voucher I had to £10 so managed to get the dvd (£7) and a set of bathroom scales (£4) for the princely sum of £1.

On the way out there was someone collecting for a charity in the foyer so I popped £1 in the bucket. DS asked why I always stop and put money in wherever I see someone collecting. I gave him my three reasons:

1) No matter how rubbish my own life may be at times, there is always someone worse off than me

2) Helping others makes me happy

3) It's good karma... I definitely believe that what goes around comes around

And as if to prove that last point, as we walked across the car park back to the car we found £1 on the ground. DS couldn't believe it. And neither could I if I'm honest :rotfl:

BettyBones

Following on from yesterday and my 'Good Karma' deed at the supermarket...

This morning I received a letter from Mr Tax Man saying that the investigation into my 2015-16 self assessment return is complete and not only do I now not have to pay any penalty but they've also re-crunched the numbers with the information I've given them and found that rather than me owing them over £900 as originally thought, they actually owe me money. So £76.60 is now winging its way back to me :T

BettyBones

I've just received a letter in the post from Tesc0 offering me a cheap 0% balance transfer or cheap 0% money transfer for 12 months. Noooooooo! Although it did fleetingly cross my mind .... No! No! No! Continuous balance transferring is what has helped keep me in debt for so long

The 0% on one of my Halifax cards, currently sitting with a debt of £2,300 on it, runs out at the end of December and whilst its seriously tempting to transfer the balance and make lower monthly payments until the end of next June instead.... No! No! No!. This will only prolong my DFD and I can't be doing with it anymore. I want this debt gone. So I'm going to grab a mirror and give myself a good talking to... Put the letter in the bin! Come on, put the letter in the bin!! For goodness sake, put the goddamn letter in the bin!!! lol

Dramaqueen33

Hi BettyBones

Well done on your journey so far. Really enjoyed reading your diary. Subscribed!

I wouldn't worry about missing out on the offer - I get these offers all the time through my door so even if you haven't quite managed to clear the debt by December I'm sure you'll find another offer if you need to nearer the time.

Enjoy paying off Santander!!

DQ x

BettyBones

Thanks Dramaqueen

You're absolutely right. I don't need to balance transfer anything right now so I'll ignore this one and see where I'm at nearer the time.

I cannot wait to pay off the balance on the S@ntander card tomorrow! Yesterday I moved £1,000 from my emergency fund into my current account so when my pay hits the bank tomorrow I'll be good to go. Although I'm working in Kent all day tomorrow so will have to get up super early to get it done before I leave. Can't wait to get that particular monkey of my back though!

I used to bank with S@ntander and got the card back in January 2014 purely to take advantage of the 0% balance transfer offer, telling myself that I would pay back the full £2,850 transferred within 6 months. Well obviously that never happened! (hangs head in shame). Although I'm happy to say I never once used it for any spends (holds head high). It has sat in the bottom of my freezer since I got it and has never left the house. As has my Halifax CC. I don't even know the pin numbers of these frozen assets lol

Good Luck with your own journey, I wish you all the best with it xx