Drawing a line under the debt

Bobarella

Sorry it is still ongoing Drawingaline glad you have had some nice times too though.

Treadingonplaymobil

Good to see you back, sorry the JSA thing is ongoing.

I can't imagine having a teenager - my eldest is almost 9 and I can feel it bearing down upon us! Surely he was a toddler only five minutes ago?!

Drawingaline

So I haven't managed to catch up on all the diaries at all, been very lax in that!

The appointment at the job centre was as awful as we expected, we have apparently been doing it all wrong and should have automatically known how to do it correctly, even though we have never had out of work benefits before and no one told my oh how he should have been doing it. Not helped by them switching him from contribution JSA to income based JSA 6 weeks after he first put a claim in (with all the proper paperwork, my pay slips, bank statements etc) when he restarted the claim after our holiday. Without telling us! The woman just couldn't understand that he never filled a form in to do this and tried to blame him by saying he shouldn't have suspended the claim for the holiday he should have come back and resubmitted a whole new claim. But he did exactly what his coach told him to, and the whole point of being able to suspend the claim for a holiday (that was all sorted and paid for a year before he was made redundant) and be able to restart it very easily is to stop people fraudantly claiming while on holiday :mad:

So it looks very likely that he will be receiving no more JSA of any kind (which was always going to happen from April/may as my hours in job 2 have now meant that i am almost full time) and she seemed confident that the decision makers would be asking for a lot of money back.

So with this in mind i have come to a decision. I am taking nearly everything out of savings and paying off the last 2k of our big loan. I was planning on clearing it by august with overpayments and have paid off 4k over the past 7months but i don't want to have to use savings to pay back the DWP while we have this debt. (Of a decision is made for us to pay any overpayment back we will of course do so, but at our own pace) I will be getting a settlement figure tomorrow and once i have cleared it we will have £230 extra a month which we can use to rebuild the emergency fund/new car fund back up. Paying it back will only leave the small amount we have saved towards this year's holiday, which was paid for out of my sharesave.

So, while not a choice everyone would make, I feel it is right for us at this time. Not having an emergency fund will hurt, but it will be short term and I know that we can go to my dad in a worst case scenario.

So, onwards and upwards.........

Drawingaline

So the settlement figure was obtained and i paid off Loan 1 yesterday :j my YNAB looks pretty dire now though :rotfl: and i now need to approach my mum to see if they can lend us the £250 housekeeping deposit we need for the holiday in may. We have the final installment for the cottage, and we have money saved to spend while there but i thought this deposit would be cheque they held and only cashed if we damaged anything. Apparently not the case. So we now have a bit of a cash flow issue! I am sure it won't be a problem and we should get it back in June, or if we lose it I will have the money to pay her back by then anyway.

Do now my goal is to start building up the emergency funds again. Xmas and car maintenance are bare too, but i have a new budget in place, just need to see what the DWP has planned and what tax credits we will get going forward.

A benefit to all this is that the oh is openly discussing our finances and seems stunned that i had 2k saved up, and that we actually have money for things atm. When he was earning a good wage he only ever had £200 left over and is now seeing that he doesn't necessarily need a job on those wages and is more open to taking a lower paid job or even part time work. I want to carry on overpayments to the two remaining debts, but this can be suspended if we need to pay back DWP or the tax credits are reduced.

Every cloud and all that hey?

boxofpaws

Wise move to pay off the big loan and pay back DWP over time.

Great to see the attitude shift in the spouses.:)

Drawingaline

Well it was a costly weekend. The Boy totally smashed his phone and no insurance. So I had to spend £60 to buy the girl out of the last part of her contract so she could get a new handset and give him her one. A new handset would have been around £70 (could have been cheaper but not good reviews) so it worked out the easiest way.

Then today the Girl has managed to lose her fitbit. She got it for her birthday, it was a complete bargain from a friend, she had it on when i picked her up from dancing as i tapped it to see how many steps she was doing and she claims she looked at it in the car for the time. She came in and noticed it was gone within 5minutes. She is gutted and distraught so i don't feel i can get angry with her, but have made it clear that i wont be replacing it. We have searched the car, i went back to the dance hall and we have checked all around outside. Just feel like i am swimming against the tide sometimes

It will get better, this is my mantra atm!

boxofpaws

Hi drawing. I'm sure with Fitbit you can log on and see where it last was?

Drawingaline

Possibly, but it was set up on my phone and wasn't synced so it isn't showing. She has some more birthday money die to come so she can decide if she wishes to save up for a replacement. She had her braces tightened today too, so feeling extra sorry for herself lol!