Drawing a line under the debt

Drawingaline

Thanks Bob. Really hope it ends up ok. Luckily because I have a £500 emergency fund and have been saving up for a new car we can actually find the one if we need to repay it, something that we wouldn't have been able to do six months ago. Hopefully this will make the oh realise what I have been doing with the budgeting and what a good idea having an emergency fund.:)

Bobarella

Well that is definitely reassuring. Hopefully it won't be needed though...

Treadingonplaymobil

What a pain, I hate things like that where it's a totally unanticipated expense and feels really unreasonable. Not the kind of thing you want to spend your hard earned emergency fund on!

Drawingaline

Top of we have to spend all the money I have saved on this expense due to an admin error I will be furious. However if we have received benefits we are not entitled to I will feel obligated to pay it back, people cheating the system is not on and annoys me massively, and even though we have not withheld information at any time and provided all the details they asked for I will still see it as 'cheating' I think. And we are in the position where we could do (although it would totally muck everything up!)

I called the tax credits yesterday to double check the information they hold for us and they have my working hours correct so no idea how DWP got it wrong if the HMRC are right? And I have been paying tax on my payslips since September due to the ridiculous amount of overtime I did before Xmas, I know the department's are notorious about talking to each other (much like the NHS) surely this would be noted?

Oh well no point dwelling on it until we know the full story, I will be dragging out all the paperwork I can find from DWP and HMRC to take along to try to get to the bottom of it all.

Drawingaline

And I am totally glad that I have been saving the council tax payments after they rebated us in the summer. Now I always thought that was strange, so worst case and they ask for that back and the other payments at least I have it and won't be in arrears with CT!

boxofpaws

You've git it thereif you need it bug I doubt they would ask for it upfront anyway. Wouldn't they just reduce your payment until it's repaid?

Anyway, wait to see what they say before you start imagining the worst:)

Drawingaline

So I have gone through all the paperwork I can find and i have found the letter and it is dated august. Now at the beginning of august we went on holiday abroad (once in a lifetime trip, booked and paid for a year before when he was working, and we saved hard for it!) Anyway we were good and notified the job centre of this trip so JSA stopped. When we returned oh called up the job centre and they advised him to do a rapid reclaim online and he wouldn't have to put all the details in and he says Theresa's a box stating 'has anything changed since your previous claim' (or similar) which of course he ticked. So he didn't have to provide bank statements, or my payslips etc for a second time. And this would appear to be when it has gone wrong :mad: so why doing this meant that they thought we had had a change in circumstances I have no idea.

I also feel completely ridiculous for not double checking, but having never had to make an out of work benefit claim before we were perhaps niave with our dealing with them. I should have known better having dealt with tax credits before

Paws, you are correct in that they can just dock from JSA, however I have a very bad feeling that he will have only ever been entitled to contribution based JSA, which would have ended after nine months or so and my income would have actually meant we never should have had income based JSA at all. So I think his JSA will be totally stopped after this meeting and as we don't claim housing benefit I am assuming we will just have to pay it back.

I have done so much research on JSA these past two days, when really I should have done this when he started his claim. But again, rather niavely, we assumed he would find another job relatively quickly. It's been almost a year :(

I am now mad at myself, mad at oh and mad at the DWP. :mad:

Drawingaline

Reading that back it makes no sense!

The rapid reclaim had a bit to tick if ' there has been no change in circumstances since your last claim'.

boxofpaws

It must be catching because my last post made little sense!

Have you been in to see them yet?

Drawingaline

So I have been taking a mse break for a bit. Mainly because i am super stressed over the whole JSA thing. The appointment was cancelled​ and has been rescheduled for next week. But oh did talk to the job centre staff when he went in this week, and they couldn't understand what might have happened and seemed confused when he stated he hadn't filled in a form at any time that they believe he should have in order to be receiving income based support.

Anyway enough about all that! We have had another birthday in this house. The Girl became a teenager. She is off on a foreign school trip tomorrow morning (ridiculously early) and is incredibly excited. Just a long weekend, but she should have a blast.

I set up the Girl and the Boy with nationwide flex accounts, complete with debit cards. The Girl now has a healthy amount in there from birthday money, the Boy has none left as he has spent it all in one morning :rotfl: (he only had £20). I allowed it this time, but we will be having some budgeting lessons going forward.

So another months payments to the loans have gone out, and the extra payment, we are £50 off going under the next thousand which is somewhat annoying.

Hopefully i am back into the mse groove, will be catching up on all the diaries over the weekend.:j