Hurrah, my MFW quest has started

abouttimetoo

Drat, just done a long post of ranting about the tax and I've lost it, off to make cup of tea and I'll come back to it!

abouttimetoo

Whoops, that was a long cup of tea :rotfl:

Ok, so I've got quite a bit to write but suspect I'll run out of time or that it will be a long post so i think I'll start with the good things and maybe do a post or two later on it the week about other matters

So, the good stuff! I've made an OP this month of £550.23 and just done the best task of the month which is updating my signature.

Amex
I was recently just thinking that my anniversary was approaching so I must be due the cashback but before I could look into it I noticed on my statement to day that £206.01 has been credited so I'm rather pleased with that. I've also had a comms from them saying if I spend £7.5k on it this year I'll get the top rate of 1.5% cashback so I'll crack on with that

Tesco Credit Card
Now I haven't used this for probably over a year but a few months ago I noticed I had a credit balance of £10 so I made a purchase to spend it and then paid the balance of and blow me didn't they take another £10 d/d and put me back to square one. The £10 has sat there for a few months again but last week I managed to remember to spend £8.56 on it so it's still a wee bit in credit but better than it was!

Salary
I'm not entirely sure whether this is good news or bad... I got £500 more in my salary this month and whilst very nice this is because they've been tinkering with my tax code. Again! Saying as I'm supposed to be paying them back monthly from salary this just doesn't feel right so looks like more phone calls to be made to the lovely HMRC

Tax man
I'm putting this one in the good news list but it will also be appearing in the bad news list...

Today my mother loaned me £3948 to pay off the tax man in one lump sum. I've yet to work out the repayments to her but they will happen every month. Please note this amount only relates to 08/09 and 09/10. A further £1858 is owed for 10/11 and being deducted from my salary and we still seem to be faffing with 11/12. The reason I'm putting it in the good news is that it means that it is one tax situation off my back and more than £700 less than they originally said for those years though at present I'm totally unable to work out how they arried at the lower amount!

Vouchers
I don't have the total to hand but I think between Mr T, Mr S and Boots I've had abouta £20 spend from their vouchers

Holidays
I had a few days away last month and managed to spend just the euros I had in the drawer from previous hols, in fact I think I may have brought 30 euros back

Right, I think that's all for now

Night all

wynnvegas

Hi ATT,

Still not impressed with HMRC. I think you've dealt with this a lot more level headedly than I would have. Centre 1 would have had a visit for sure. I might even have got Froggy G and his riot squad on the case! Pleased it seems to be bottomed out.

Glad everything else is going grand though.

Cheers,

Billy

welshlovebiscuit

Hello there!

I'm also a recent convert to the MSE way of life. A colleague swears by this site so I took a look and was inspired to tackle our depressing state of affairs. First area I've addressed is our shocking spending on groceries!

I have a debt to clear first but am focused on that mortgage - I don't want to spend the rest of my working life in debt. I too have been playing with spreadsheets - great fun isn't it!

abouttimetoo

welshlovebiscuit wrote: »

Hello there!

I'm also a recent convert to the MSE way of life. A colleague swears by this site so I took a look and was inspired to tackle our depressing state of affairs. First area I've addressed is our shocking spending on groceries!

I have a debt to clear first but am focused on that mortgage - I don't want to spend the rest of my working life in debt. I too have been playing with spreadsheets - great fun isn't it!

Hi there welshlovebiscuit, I luuurrrvve the name by the way, it conjures up all sort of images but I think I'm too nervous to ask the background to your user name :rotfl:

Thanks for stopping bu and well done on starting to address your finances, it's certainly a worthwhile pursuit!

Re spreadsheet, yes, we love them on here, totally addicitve and many a happy hour is whiled away playing with scenarios

Regards
ATT

abouttimetoo

jkapoor3 wrote: »

hummmm..... all i can say is Best Of Luck....

Hi jkapoor4, thanks for stopping by and your good wishes

I hope your plans are coming along well too

Regards
ATT

abouttimetoo

So a couple of days ago I did the 'good stuff' so I thought I'd just jot down a list of the not so good... although some of it is expected expenditure

• Dentist £52.50
• Osteopath £30
• Massages (very bad injury and pain needed addressing) £100
• Gas £70
• Electric £40
• New baby in the family £50 and counting...
• Hair £27 (rarely have my hair cut but most annoyed with this one as I had vouchers in the house for this one from a birthday gift and I forgot to take them with me

So, quite a bit has gone out this month

Right, I now need to go away and work out how much I will be repaying my lovely mother in respect of the loan she gave me to repay Mr Tax man

Hope you are all well

abouttimetoo

So, here follows another HMRC update...

Today they have cashed the cheque for £3948 in relation to 08/09 & 09/10 (this money borrowed from lovely mother)

I've also spoken to them to understand how much of the £1858 from 10/11 I've repaid direct from salary. This has been the biggest challenge for me in terms of getting to the bottom of it. You'd think it would be a simple task but oh no... Anyway, think I'm there now and I owe £1085.

I simply can't cope with not knowing how much my salary should be (three changes in 6 months) so I have agreed to also settle this figure in full. I'm planning to take this from the little bit of savings I have although again my lovely mother has offered and I might yet take her up on the offer.

So, in total that would be £5806 paid to HMRC which is horrible but better than the £6506 they had originally calculated for 08-11. The only other query now is have the managed to get things right for 11/12. This does worry me as although my company sent the P11D 4th July I had a letter two weeks ago asking me send my original copy to them so they could make the right calcs so fingers crossed.

Paying off two lump sums should mean that my salary is corrected and I can then work out just where I am and what I can afford to repay lovely parents!

abouttimetoo

I've made my update to the MFiT T2 update. I'm still behind where I want to be but any progress is good right

I'm also paying an extra £100 to my credit card, this is against stooze principles but I've had it lurking around for so long and I want to clear the decks so I'm making small sums to it.

I don't have the balance to hand but I think I have £4.5k outstanding and whilst it is at 0% interest I did have the initial handling fee. The point of stoozing is to keep the money and invest it in such a way that it makes you more money than it costs but this was the remanants of a larger balance that I had had from some time ago and I did stoozes on top of that and lost my way after the larger stoozes were repaid (about 22k I think from memory)

I don't know how much sense that makes but the bottom line is that I owe £4.5k that needs to be repaid by March next year :eek: Add this to owing lovely parents and that's a shocking £10,306 of debt.

This is enought to really focus the mind! In theory I could repay this over about 18 months without it effecting my Op's too much so
i need to be much more watchful and challenging about my expenditure. In the last year or so I have spent soooo much on eating out with friends and family (at least twice a week) and this is something that just has to be greatly reduced! I've also bought myself a couple of rather large treats and I'm not going to do that for a good while now

Regards
ATT

abouttimetoo

Hi all

I'm on a different laptop to normal so don't have my lovely spreadsheets to hand so hopefully I will get on here later with some more precise figures. I seem to have had money whizzing all over the place this month so I need to pin that all down

I had a very expensive time at the supermarket at the weekend as I was going to be at home all week and all the big things needed buying too e.g. toilet rolls, cleaning products etc. The bill was £80 and I nearly died because there was very little food in there. I also had a £4 off voucher but had stupidly taken the one for the coming week instead, however, they have said that if I take the right one back along with my receipt they will give me the refund so I haven't totally lost out.

I've also made two extra OP's this month (again, don't have figures to hand) The aim was to pay £1000 off the mortgage this month and would you beleive I ended up sending and extra £100!

I normally make my OP's on the 19th of the month but I made this months yesterday. With so much going on financially and owing the parents etc I wanted to make the standard OP so when I get paid next week I will know where I stand.

I've also repaid my parents £198 to take the amount down to a round £3750 and then after pay day will work out where I am.

Finally, I've still not received the paying in slip from HMRC to clear the 10/11 part....

Hope you are all well?

Regards
ATT