Little phone call to HMRC to claim said tax back, only to be told that because I am still in work (3.5 hours a week at private school job) then they won't send it back, but it will be paid back little by little as they realise that my wage is more like £400 than £4000. Thats nice, but what do they expect me to live on?
So I need to figure out the best thing to do with my meagre payout which just to be clear only included £556 worth of actual non-taxable redundancy pay for my four years of hard slog at the hell hole. The rest was holiday pay, a weeks wages and 4 months pay in lieu of notice. Obviously thats all at 0.33 of what I was on before Christmas.
Anyhow enough of the complaining, its a lump sum of money that I would never be given again and along with my savings from exam marking etc. I have a half decent little nest egg sat in my ISA. The problem with it sitting in an ISA though is that while interest rates range from 0.05% to 3%, inflation is still around 2.8% so even with the interest my nest egg is gradually becoming worth less. What I could buy for £4000 today is not the same as what I could buy for £4000 next year. Remember when a fiver used to be able to buy a couple of drinks on a night out or a least down the local pub? Now we're lucky if we get one drink!
My plan B (one day maybe) has been to buy a few properties and its something I like doing, so I thought I might put my money down as a deposit on a buy to let.
Houses in this neck of the woods are definitely cheaper than most places in the UK and with the college now being a university centre and attracting more and more students because of the lower fees there is definite potential in the area. House prices are still on a downward trend too which hopefully means sellers are open to negotiation, although my attempts so far to buy a repossession property for only slightly less than the asking price have not gone well. The estate agent told me himself that they had advised the asking price be reduced to less than I offered and that any other offers made had been considerably less. The house needs a little work to say the least.
The agent that called me back to inform me that my offer had been refused spoke encouragingly of how excited the sellers were (a bank) that I might offer and extra £2000 on top of what I had! Hubby said I should have expressed my own excitement at the possibility of them accepting an offer of £2000 less than I had put forward :-)
I'll wait it out on this one and in the mean time continue the search.
In the meantime I have a couple of pieces of good news! :-)
we went for the updated version :-)
Yes I know I'm redundant and only working very part time and no I am not using my redundacy pay to buy it! This is hubby and I's first joint purchase, we traded in Tiglet (my 7 year old Tigra) which was doing about 35mpg, needed a new engine and only had two seats for this little baby.
She is tax free as she only has a 0.9litre engine, which also means she is very fuel efficient, so far its costing us £25 less to do about 350 miles, she has 4 seats so room for the boy and she's a convertible, the red roof is a soft top :-)
And how are hubby and I going to pay for it? Well as I mentioned before hubby has a fulltime job (Housemaster at the private school) starting in September and my teaching hours at the school have been quadrupled! Thats sounds like loads, but 3.5hours X 4 isn't that huge, huge enough to live on though, especially as all our accommodation and food and bills are paid by the school :-)
We've known about the housemaster job for a while now and we were eager to get involved so offered to redecorate the boarding house (it was in desperate need!)
We have been knee deep in paint, literally at times, for a week now. The place is huge and along with the painting there are a multitude of maintenance and cleaning jobs that we have found along the way so its been a slow slog and there's much more to do. We also more or less live at the local B&Q and I am driving hubby mad again with paint colours and charts. It does mean that since Itlay we haven't had much time to go out spending which is a bonus as the next 2 months, until we get paid a real wage in September, are going to be tight.
Even though its not our money filling B&Q's pocket we still have a budget to stick to and we are genuine scrimpers at heart. So we have scrimped our way through redecorating a common room (lounge), 5 bedrooms and stairs, hall and landing in the boarding house, the lounge in our flat and hopefully a little more before we run out of the paint that cost us approximately £200. This is in an old Victorian building where there is no such thing as a small room or a low ceiling so a little has gone an awfully long way. The trade card that allows 10% off and the Dulux offer of 2 for £20 that is on at the moment have also helped, but it was mainly the decision to buy 10 litre tubs of white emulsion and the little 1 litre pots of posh colour and mix our own that saved us the most, halving the price of the ready mixed stuff.
Of course it is the school that has got the biggest bargain by having hubby and I working for free!
Hubby has taken me out for a couple of meals though, I think to thank me for my painting skills (he hates painting) and we managed to squeeze in a trip to York yesterday via the designer outlet which tempted me into a couple of purchases (at considerable discounts of course) and a mystery visit at my favourite York restaurant.
And so the situation so far:
Employment: Part time, but earning a decent wage with no bills to pay as long as I can find lodgers for my house.
Lodgers: 2 (1 to shortly depart and 5 potentials waiting for viewings)
Eating out: Hubby's treats and one mystery visit.
Hubby: 1 and we made it passed a year!
Dog: 1 (a little confused about where we disappear to every day and why we return covered in paint)
Stepson: 1
No Spend Days: Going well except the little trip to the designer outlet, DIY is keeping me away from any shops other than B&Q.
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