What is Wrong with the SLC – rant!! July 20, 2009
Posted by graciek in Life in General, Money, WTF?.add a comment
Grr raaaa grrr. What is the major malfunction at the Student Loans Company (SLC)? OK, this is really a rant on behalf of hubby as I have no problems with my loan (which will thankfully be paid off next April). Before leaving the UK in December to live in Australia I contacted them and filled in the Overseas Income Assessment (OIA) form so that hubby’s payments could continue. Now I told them we weren’t moving to Australia until Christmas, so they rather helpfully wrote their reply on 10th December and sent it straight to Oz address!! Now due to Christmas we didn’t get this letter until the New Year. The letter says that we haven’t provided payment details (even though I completed the direct debit form when I sent off the OIA – how come they received the OIA but not the DD when they are actually on the same piece of paper?) and that we have to send them a cheque by 15th December. Yes – that’s right, they send you something and expect it to arrive in the post in Australia and somehow get a cheque to them and clear it within 5 days (I’d estimate that even if there was no lag time this would take 2.5 weeks). So hubby wrote a letter explaining that we’d only just received the letter and it would not be possible to send them a cheque 20 days in the past and again gave them the DD details. Thankfully this was processed correctly and the payments started coming out. 2 payments in and the SLC suddenly stop taking payments. We noticed in May that the payments had stopped and contacted them again – they have no idea why the payments have stopped and ask us if we have stopped them (WTF!! blaming us??? we did NOT stop any DD from them) and hubby asks them to reinstate the payment schedule again. They say no because our details from the OIA form have inexplicably dissappeared and we have to fill in the form again and send it to them. In the meantime to not fall behind with payments they agree to set up voluntary payments of the amount required until they have received and processed our 2nd OIA form. Hubby fills in the form AGAIN and faxes it to them. Beginning of May we get a letter from them confirming that we have set up the voluntary payments via DD and the amounts. Funny no payments taken in May. End of May we get another letter saying that they’ve increased our payments by the amount of the original payment and that the first payment would be taken 10 days in the past???, which of course it wasn’t). So still no payments, even though we have provided them with everything they need to get their money. This week we get a letter in the post that is so perplexing – it has a very accusatory tone and they’ve suddenly decided that they don’t know whether we are in the UK or not and that if we have left the UK they are going to fine us with maximum repayments if we do not fill in an OIA form for them. WTF again? This is now the third time we’ve filled in that bloody OIA form and the 4th time we’ve provided them with the details for payment. I am getting thoroughly cheesed off with this. It’s not like we’re some scumbags who are trying to skip the country without paying off the loan. We’re desperately trying to get them to take the money but they are being so useless. It’s even worse that each time we provide them with the info, they confirm in writing that it’s all sorted out and then nothing happens, a couple of months later they then send a letter accusing us of essentially trying to avoid paying. What IS wrong with them?
I have come to the conclusion that the SLC are either incompetent or they have some strange Dr Who wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey thing going on where they keep going back in time, claiming payments coming back to the present, going back in time, changing something which then changes the present time and the information previously provided dissappears because we are in a parallel universe!!!
Happy Birthday April 3, 2009
Posted by graciek in Family, Life in General, Money.add a comment
It’s my Dad’s 75th birthday and my Sister’s 21+st birthday (ahem, 34th) today! So happy birthday to you both. We’ve sent some little pressies to my sis via Amazon and Evie recorded a special birthday message for Kong Kong (better than the same old ecard).
We also got the survey results back for the house (building and pest report). Looks like the house is in good nick – yes it’s old and will need maintenance but it’s not infested nor falling over. So we’re good to go with the purchase. Gave them the rest of the 10% deposit and now our bank balance is looking much less impressive (50k+ less) – ah well soon it’ll be even less impressive when we complete. Think we’ll have just enough to furnish (cheaply via Ikea and Fantastic Furniture) and have a little set aside for rainy days. It’s hard to gauge how much we’ll have each month till we get bills and more settled. Then I’ll be able to work out how much we can put aside for Evie savings too. Poor Evie’s piggy bank has not been fed for 4 months (well, it has been on a boat somewhere AWOL). Our container of stuff should dock in Sydney on Monday. All being well we’ll move in and then get our stuff delivered. Can’t wait.
Totally Skint February 6, 2009
Posted by graciek in Australia, Life in General, Money.Tags: exchanging money
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Well, after a whole week of watching and waiting for the exchange rate between GBP and AUD to spike (which it actually didn’t really, it just fluctuated) we finally bit the bullet and changed our UK money over. We’re using a company called UK Forex (also Oz Forex), which seems to have good rates (approx 0.01c less than interbank lending and has no fees/commission on sums greater than £10k). Last weekend it stopped at 2.29AUD to 1GBP and it went down all week (with a couple of spikes when the AU rescue package wasn’t a shoe in and GBP interest rate cut was announced). Nothing major to report unlike October 2008 when it hit 2.7! Managed to get 2.229 in the end. Shortly afterwards it fell below 2.2 so we got in there just in time. It was very scary sending all our money off into the ether. I had to send it in £10k batches through Nationwide online banking. Hopefully it will appear in our Oz bank by the end of next week (given that UK Forex probably won’t receive it until say Wednesday). So it’s going to be a nervous week next week wondering where our money has gone.
Now I can go back to my real life where I’m not sat there watching graphs!!! How sad am I?
Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, Future & IR!! January 14, 2009
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Well it’s about 3 weeks since Christmas. Long gone are the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future as in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. But yey, welcome the ghost of christmas Tax… or to be more precise the ghost of taxation year 2007/08. Now after the balls up of the Student Loans Company who refused to take the repayments for 9 months and hence fudged something 2 years ago, they then decided after self-assessment in April 08 that they owed us £730. Oh good, that’s a nice figure that we’ll use to pay off a chunk of said student loan. Oh no, we arrive in Australia and some post gets redirected from the UK saying they are clawing back their overpayment and that we only have 1 week to pay it back. We both filled in our P85s before we left – but oh no, these have conveniently been lost somewhere by IR. So even though they owe us tax (because we have overpayed because we won’t be working from Jan-Apr 09) we have to pay this overpayment by them first. Also they sent hubby’s P45 to our Australia address (so they must have received the P85 as it they were sent together) saying that his new UK employer needs to fill in the slip – WTF … there is no new UK employer. What is wrong with these people? No wonder everyone hates the taxman – it’s not that I begrudge paying the correct amount of tax, it’s the pussy footing, confusing, not reading things properly, taking months to give you money, yet demanding money within a week for something that was their fault in the first place!! And on top of that today I got a letter in the post (direct to my Oz address) from the Child Benefit people asking me to fill in a form telling them I’m moving permanently and asking what my postal address will be… let me see I sent them a letter at the beginning of December advising of us moving and to stop payments. Then end of December they paid me Child Benefit. I then sent them an email telling them AGAIN not to pay me and already advising of the change of address. Now I have told them 3 times what my new address is, they’ve even sent me things to my new address, but I have to fill in yet another bloody form with the exact same information in order for them to stop. Somehow I suspect they will finally twig and demand the money back within, let’s guess, minus 20 days time??? Where’s the Ghost of Christmas Past when you need him?
House Sold December 15, 2008
Posted by graciek in Life in General, Loughborough, Money.add a comment
Woo Hoo! We completed on our house sale today. Thank God! We have almost 6 figures in our bank account (well, not so much if u take off the student loans) – should be a great deposit to use to buy our next house in Australia. We left the new occupants an information pack about the house as well as a bottle of bubbly to welcome them. It does feel ever so sad as that was our home for 6 years, but in the same way it’s about time that we moved on to pastures new. I hope that we can find a house and home we can be equally, if not more happy in.
Not My Parking Fine November 20, 2008
Posted by graciek in Life in General, Money.Tags: sold car, unfair parking fine
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We sold hubby’s car on the 26th October to a used car dealer. He gives them the V5 and duly sends off the little yellow signed slip (V5C I think) to the DVLA. 3rd November a letter arrives stating that we have been fined for parking the car for 9hrs at a motorway service station on 1st November (now, who would voluntarily want to go to one of those for 9hrs) and that according to DVLA hubby is still the registered owner!! Hubby rings up DVLA to see why they haven’t processed the V5 slip yet. Apparently it’s disappeared into the ether at either DVLA or Royal Mail. Hmm. But it’s OK as we have a sales receipt from the dealer. Which we then fax to them with a letter. A few days later DVLA say they have put a note against the car registration, but that they cannot complete the transfer until the new owner sends in the V5 bit. Hmm so we can’t get proof from DVLA that it’s not our car anymore even though we sent them a sales receipt. Now we send the solicitors who are chasing us from the service station parking company a new letter and a copy of the sales receipt. Today we got a letter acknowleding receipt of our letter saying that DVLA still has hubby as the registered owner and that we need to prove it’s been sold by providing documentation such as a sales receipt. WTF – that’s what the last letter was about. It feels like we’re going round in circles and if we don’t pay within a month then they’ll take us to court. I’m so stressed about it as no matter what we do to prove we don’t have the car anymore all parties seem to just ignore it! I’m quite worried that if this isn’t resolved in the next few weeks we’ll have moved to Australia and next time we come back to the UK for a visit hubby will have a CCJ on his head without even knowing about it. So the question is, unless the buffoon who eventually bought the car sends in his V5 slip will we keep being chased? Even more alarming is the road tax is expiring end of this month and they keep sending us the SORN. Now I don’t want to get a fine for not paying the road tax, but we don’t have the car anymore!! The other bugger who owns the car won’t receive the SORN and won’t be able to tax it. Or maybe that’s the new owner’s plan to just rack up fines and not pay the tax. At any rate, we sold it to a dealer, so they should be able to provide the DVLA with the details of who bought the car – so why is everyone chasing us? Grrrrrrrrr RANT RANT RANT.
Banking October 17, 2008
Posted by graciek in Life in General, Money.add a comment
It’s all such doom and gloom in the media lately about all things financial. As we’re emigrating at the end of the year I’m slowly getting all my finances in order. First of all I cancelled all the credit cards I no longer use (I confess to being a bit of a card tart in the past and swapping cards when special rates finished – glad to state though that I’ve never paid a penny of interest on any of my cards). Last month I wrote to if.com to close one of my ISAs. After 3 weeks I finally got a cheque for the amount only to find they’d forgotten to sign the cheque. WTF, a bank that forgets to sign cheques?? Anyway, today I finally received a signed cheque and paid it into the bank.
Budgetting April 14, 2008
Posted by graciek in Life in General, Money, Pregnancy.Tags: first time parent budgetting
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As with probably most first time parents I am beginning to worry more about how we are going to deal with our budgetting. We’ve got used to having 2 incomes now and as our incomes have increased as we’ve got older we also seem to spend just as much proportionally with nothing much to show for it. When I first graduated hubby and I lived off just my income (which I think was about £18k) and we were comfortable, ran 2 cars and managed to buy a house (albeit mortgaged up the hilt). Fast forward 5 years and our joint salary is almost £60k yet it doesn’t feel like we are any more comfortable and there certainly isn’t a huge amount left in the account at the end of the month. So question is… where does this money go each month? And second question – how will we cope when we are down to one income again?
Hubby is rubbish at financial stuff so we have joint accounts and I deal with it all. Financially things should be pretty much the same up till the baby is born, then up till October we will actually be a little better off because of Child Benefit. After October however it will be hard as we will have hubby’s income with child benefit and SMP. Come January will be extremely hard as we will be living only on SMP (ouch, until hubby starts his job) as we will hopefully have moved out to Oz. I was also trying to work out Child/Working Tax credit and based on this year’s (Apr 08-09) estimated income we would prob qualify for 500 ish a year, but then I noticed that they use your past tax year’s income to assess in which case we are obviously well over. I’m not moaning about it or expecting state handouts (as I appreciate there are people who really do need them to get by in life) – it’s just confusing me. Still have yet to work out what I’m going to do about pensions and NI – think I may need a visit to the CAB. From now till October I’m going to move 2/3 of my income into the savings to see how we cope.
Summary of the day: Work (yawn), Tried to go to chemist on way home (no bloody parking outside, as I found out after spending few minutes trying to reverse into a space only to find out it was 1/2 a space and triangular shaped at that), Worked out our budget
Pensions January 2, 2008
Posted by graciek in Life in General, Money.Tags: pensions
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Yes, it’s the start of a new year and I am again getting the twinges of the secondary wavefront of my early mid-life crisis. This time it’s pensions. I know they’re meant to be a good thing (as hey, I’ll need to eat and keep myself warm when we’re old). But sometimes I do get a bit flummoxed by it all. Currently for some reason I have 3 pensions that I have paid into. One was a company I only worked for in the summer holidays between Uni years. For some reason they always seemed to get my name wrong, I’d correct them each summer only for the plan date to come with the wrong name on again!! I’m guessing this pension won’t be fruitful at all seeing as I’ve only worked a cumulative 18 months there! Then there’s the Uni pension which is going well, but again have no idea, even with all the flashy web gizmos that help you predict this that and the other (seems like everything apart from the weather) that the pension company provide. The third one is the state pension, where our NI goes. During the years of summer placements I ended up with a few years where the contributions weren’t complete so had until April this year to pay up if I wanted to top those years up. Decided I may as well do it to boost my years – now I’ve officially been in the world of work for 10 years. According to the bumpf I’ll get about 16 squid a week once I hit 60 (I guess that age limit may be raised by the time I get there) – hmm guess not quite enough to retire now 
Summary of the day: Took the Christmas tree down (boo), Made wonton soup
