Travelling On

Karmacat

Thanks Squirrel, much appreciated.  My brain isn't quite in gear yet, but I'll get on it soon.  

I did astonishingly little of my list yesterday - probably because I loathe most of the jobs, for one reason or another, or just that I'm bored with them.  Today, however, there's an online seminar on using DNA info for genealogy - at the moment, it's interesting, but the only use seems to be if distant rellies have also done it - the site will show the link to them, but it relies on them coming back to the site and finding your message.  

We shall see!

badmemory

We've lost contact with some of my father's family.  So we did the DNA thing (23 & me) and the best connection that has come up in, I think it is 5 years now, is a massive 0.40% link.  They are all from America & I am sure are the decendants of my great great grandmother's siblings.  They went from Germany through the UK to America.   On their way through she met her husband & stayed!  But the link is so distant.  I would have liked her birth cert but they only allow you to buy in person.

beanielou

Hope you can get a good conclusion. 

Karmacat

I'm making notes on a draft email, but this is just a summary so my head doesn't explode.  Spoke to two people, my phone shows that the call was an hour long.  Accounts were closed on 3rd August 2021, and I have "Aberdeen" money credited to my NatWest account for the first two of the three payments I made, plus £7 or so interest.  Which still means £600 and interest is missing.  

I was supposed to be transferred to servicing - nope, transferred back to the beginning again, luckily I pressed the right option buttons, but as soon as I started giving the sort code, the line went dead.  

My fame precedes me.  Going to break for lunch/loo/fresh air, and try again, as long as it doesn't interfere with my DNA Genealogy seminar.

Karmacat

Okay, here's a lesson for the future: when you close an account, make sure you have all the statements (I thought I did this, but I obviously don't) and make sure their closing figure agrees with what you receive.  The Virgin Money escapades above overlap the Post Office account closure, and none of the figures in my bank statement reconcile with the figures on the PO statements.  I'm going to carry on chasing this £600 because I do think they've made a mistake, but I'm not going to work with the PO - I think its probably okay, and I'm going to think of it as the price paid to learn a lesson.

In general, lots less interest earned, I think because I really upped the amount of premium bonds.  And I'm starting to suspect that the rates on my accounts, as opposed to the official base rate, were lower than the previous year.  I'm not going to check.

U3A lecture on DNA Genealogy was good, gave me some new ideas, more shredding, sawing down 2 years of laurel growth, quite a lot of comfort eating  but I need a scarf around my jaw if I'm out for 45 mins like that in this cold, it was 6 hours ago and my teeth are still aching.

Karmacat

badmemory said:

We've lost contact with some of my father's family.  So we did the DNA thing (23 & me) and the best connection that has come up in, I think it is 5 years now, is a massive 0.40% link.  They are all from America & I am sure are the decendants of my great great grandmother's siblings.  They went from Germany through the UK to America.   On their way through she met her husband & stayed!  But the link is so distant.  I would have liked her birth cert but they only allow you to buy in person.

I'm so sorry, badmemory, I didn't see your post, I was obsessing about Virgin Money!

You can buy birth, marriage and death certificates online, for sure, I've done it many times - or do you mean they keep the information from you to try to force you to buy it through them?  Let me know, and I'll point you to an official website if you like.

We have a distant link that DNA showed up.  My grandfather was taken from his mother by his aunts, and his mother left the family and brought up 3 more children: he was born in wedlock, so they must have been out of it.  What it means, though, is that my grandfather had three half-siblings, and I found a woman on Ancestry who was related to me through this woman, a Yorkshire factory worker.  I've tried to contact her, but I can only do it through the site, and she hasn't responded.

beanielou said:

Hope you can get a good conclusion. 

Thanks beanie!  Of the £3610, I've found £3010 plus £7.93 interest, so it's just another £600 to go now.  I'm only getting 10% of the interest I got last year, I do think it's because of the premium bonds and more money going into ISAs maybe.  I'm better at timing this year, but not nearly good enough yet, this is like a historical puzzle, it's appalling 🙄

Never mind, going to finish now.  I'll probably get this done before Christmas at this rate!  But no Christmas cards yet done 😲😲😲

badmemory

The problem is that she was born in a small town in Germany.  I have the marriage cert from Norfolk, with her name spelt wrong & half the time her first names are in the wrong order, just to go with the surname spelt with either a Z or a J.  I think it should be J.  I did wonder if they changed the spelling so people didn't know they were Jewish.

Karmacat

Family History
If you're referring to your great-great-grandmother, spellings were just much more fluid than nowadays   though of course Jewish names were often anglicised - there was a little plot point about that even in Downton Abbey  

But this could be a bit exciting!  How To Germany - FAQ - Birth and Death Certificates

Anglo Saxon etc Germans emigrated, but of course it's likely that the family was Jewish - I'm betting there's a Jewish History Society that could help you  


HMRC declaration
I just hopped on there - definitely going to stop in a minute - I input the figure for interest bearing accounts, much lower than last year - and checked again on the declaration of the state pension for tax purposes.  Once I know how they want it done, it will be easy:

- 6 April 2021 was the date of the start of the tax year.
- 10 April 2021 is the date the tax website says is the start of the new amount of pension entitlement (£718.40 every 4 weeks)
- though my letter says 12 April is the start of the new amount.

I get the full state pension, so 718.40 x 13 = £9939.
If I count the stub of the first week as being a full pension week, then its:
718.40 x 12 = 8620.80 plus
718.4/4 x 3 = 538.80 plus
700.80/4 x 1 = 175.20 (that's the 4 weekly rate for the previous year).
Total: £9334.80.

They also supply a freefone number to ask for a form that tells you the figure they want you to input 🙄🤣 this is slightly mad - the only reason I have to do it is the dratted foreign investment.

That's it now.  Beddie-byes.  Sleep well all.




ETA - this is haunting me, the figures I've quoted can't be right, there's a difference of £604.20 between the two totals.  Sigh ... 



EETA - silly person: the first figure isn't 9939, its 9339.  Malapropism with numbers.

Cheery_Daff

What a complicated system it sounds like! Hope you make it through relatively unscathed and can get back to doing something more cheerful!

Karmacat

That's dead right, Cheery, its complicated and there's absolutely no need.  The tax year starts on the 6 April, and the new pension amount is paid from 12 April.  And they don't want to know what you were actually paid as pension, they want to know what you're entitled to (which is different because of being paid every 4 weeks, for instance).  Ridiculous.  

I'm hoping badmemory will pop along some time today and comment on whether or not I've got the concept/figures right, but I'm not doing anything else on it today: my priorities today are shredding, Christmas cards and a bit of cutting back laurel in the garden, remembering to wear a huge scarf around my face because its so cold.