Money down the drain - tell me your tales of misery!

[SomeOtherGirl]

Bad luck comes in threes, and I've had three money ones this week (the second one's not too bad)!

1- DH used a toll bridge that won't let you pay at a toll gate, you have to log on to the website when you get home. Guess what, he forgot - and used it in both directions. £80 fine coming our way! (And he wonders why I'm so neurotic about stuff! :-D )

2 - The toilet broke and needed replacing. I called a plumber and he wanted £160 plus VAT for the first hour. DH is currently redeeming himself for item 1, with a youtube 'how to' video and a toilet from B&Q. Dodged a financial bullet there! And shredded the divorce papers. Phew!

3 - But the most annoying one - I just mucked up an accommodation reservation in a really daft way that has made it cost an extra £130. Nothing I can do to undo the damage - I've tried, it is what it is - basically I lost out on a one-off discount. Urgh. That's a lot of money to me!

When this kind of thing happens, it makes me reflect on how difficult it is to save / earn money, and how easy it is to lose it, if you're daft enough (like us!!) For example, last night I spent three hours on the internet researching baby equipment to save £30 on the price of a baby item for imminent DC2. I was dead chuffed to have saved the money and was all pleased for a bit. That's three hours of an evening to save £30. How have I just thrown away £130 then?! What is wrong with me?

Now I'm wondering what I could have done with that £130, all the lovely things I deny myself in the interest of saving money.

*15 books for DC
*Probably an entire layette (if you still use that word!) for DC2
*10ish reusable nappies
*A total hair makeover including dye, perm and other glitzy stuff
*260 cans of diet coke
*A babysitter and meal and cocktails out on two occasions for me and DH
*A fancy upgrade on the pram I want to get for DC2 but can't justify
*A fancier phone next time I upgrade
*proper leather boots this winter
*A Rymek keyboard (total frivolity!)
*Petrol for four and a half round trips to see my DPs
*Tickets to go and see DPILs
*A lot of cinema tickets
*A lovely(ier) birthday present for DH
*Some clothes that aren't in the sale for once! (And therefore probably fit a little better)

I could go on :-D

Then I was thinking, hmmm, what could I do to make up that money, little by little - and I realised the world doesn't really work that way. I found 18p on the street the other day and felt I'd won !!!

So aibu to ask you to cheer me up and tell me the face palm moments when you realise you'd lost / squandered / wasted a load of money, what would you have done with the money if you hadn't lost it, and whether you managed to do anything to make it up in the end? :-)

I've done the thinking it was a £15 bottle of wine, then realising it was £150 when the bill came. I misread the decimal point. I didn't even appreciate it when I was drinking it, as I thought it was a bog standard bottle.

£40 more for the wine is a bit cheeky! I know someone has to open it and pour it out etc but honestly it is a rip off. No wonder restaurants like to push their drinks on to you as soon as you walk in there!
In the 80s some places used to give you a free drink at the end with the bills : only small , but it was a nice touch. (That hasn't happened for years on the odd occasion we go anywhere! ) even the after eights have disappeared in the local Indian!

@cms1972

Dear NewspaperTaxis

I totally agree that Checkatrade is rubbish - yet another toothless moneymaking scheme - and care homes are a rip-off. You saying that your mum was sat in her room in front of CBeebies all day but getting her medication in time sums it up perfectly.

I would never work in a Barchester home as they run on a 'pile them high, staff them low mentality' (this is my experience of a local Barchester). But all care homes are expensive unfortunately, it's the nature of the beast.
This is why we kept my dad at [his own] home and paid a carer to go in twice daily to check on him, wash him & remind him to take his meds. We were fortunate to be able to do this, especially as he refused point blank to go into a home! Your LPA advice is also very sound.

But implying that the local parkinsons nurse is a 'dodgy character' who is buzzing round your mother 'like a bee round a honeypot' is unfair. NHS pay is pretty rubbish and nurses are essentially being screwed over by the system, the same as everyone else. They don't get a bonus if somebody has to go into care!

Thanks for your sympathetic words, cms1972.

Did you know that a Checkatrade thread on Mumsnet some years ago got shut down after Checkatrade sent a legal letter to Mumsnet, demanding they hand over the actual contact details of all members who'd slagged them off? To their credit, Mumsnet refused.

Re the Parkinson's nurse, I can only speak for mine, who in point of fact never ever advised us of the importance of acquiring LPA in Health and Welfare - afterwards you could kind of see why. Power seems the one thing they don't want you to have.
She colluded with the local authority - Surrey County Council - to fit us up in a so-called Safeguarding meeting falsely presented to us as a 'Best Interests' meeting about Mum, when they pretended to consider whether to let her back to the family home.
We struggled hard to get the Minutes - whereupon we found that the said nurse who was virtually mute in the meeting was a right chatterbox on the Minutes, raising all sorts of objections against us having Mum home that we would have rebutted in person had she actually said them in the meeting.
Of course, if you don't rebut them, they are held to be 'true'.
It was a classic fit up. We then faced the awkward snag of how you 'get rid of' a Parkinson's nurse when you don't want her and she is being a busy bee sneaking into the care home behind your back and oddly, again, turning a deaf ear to your pleas to the care home that they might give Mum a drink.
I wouldn't put the Parkinson's nurse in the same bracket as your average NHS nurse, in fact I'm not sure what she does all day. She and her mate appear to be un-sackable - in the job over a decade now or thereabouts, but that it appears is what happens when you know the dirty secrets.

In the 80s some places used to give you a free drink at the end with the bills : only small , but it was a nice touch. (That hasn't happened for years on the odd occasion we go anywhere! ) even the after eights have disappeared in the local Indian!

Not in Lincolnshire. Still get a glass of Baileys at the end of a meal in an Indian here. Got a shot of caramel vodka with the bill in a tapas bar last week.

The free drinks in restaurants were fazed out round our way years ago !
We applied for L P A for my parents and it is a godsend. I recommend it to people to apply for it , even though it's not an easy process to get your head around.
Dealing with authorities and older parents can be very tricky.

Pre-Covid in the Spring, DGS was looking forward to his ‘Prom’. We bought him a nice, smart suit.

The school originally promised that the Prom was only postponed, but obviously we accept that now it is not going to happen.

Since then DGS has grown another inch or two and is still getting bigger; suit will never be worn.

Paid £289 to replace my clutch because the car mechanic said that that was my car's problem.

Turned out it was something else connected to the clutch, which he later charged me £400 for. So the replaced clutch was just for fun :/

Couldn't select reverse or first gear and was quoted £1250 to replace the gearbox. The car was 10 years old and I though I loved driving her I was fearful of throwing good money after bad so, with a heavy heart, I advertised it locally. Guy I knew came round to look at it. Asked why so cheap. Told him what was rong. He laughed and said he could fix it for me. Came round the following weekend , took him just over an hour and he charged me £9 for the part and a cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit. I tried to pay him for his time but he wouldn't take anymore. Still got the car but my daughter has it now.

Not had a chance to RTFT yet but here is my contrbution ;

Big works commotion going on in April ish at the other end of the country , ( furlough staff threatening to strike ) so book a last minute train ticket , all good , need to change trains half way there connecting train cancelled (covid) manage to get another one but had to pay another £40 , but it goes to a different station so using the taxi company that we have a account with I book a car to pick me up , recon the fare will be about £25 it sucks but nothing I can do .
Ring my work mate to say I will be there but I am cutting it fine if he can delay the meeting by half a hr I would be grateful .
He said his brother can pick me up as he lives near the station and will be joining us at the meeting , great ! call the cab company back about 15 mins after the booking was placed , nope they can not cancel it and a no show will cost £20 so I keep the booking ( very clear about this ).

Call workmate back saying sod it I will get the cab .
get to the station , no taxi , ring company oh this has been taken off our books as it was cancelled NO IT WAS NOT , get me a cab !
Get to the site explain to a very heated crowd of staff of about 40 that we have to furlough 6 of them , they will get 80% pay , but if they all go on strike no one will get any money at all and it could lead to a tribunal , they go into a 'meeting' aka shouting match with themselves .
I grab a much needed coffee , 10 mins late they call me , and say ok we will be furloughed . all done and dusted withing less than a hour .
It cost a total of just over £200 and took a full working day . ARGGGG !

@VickySunshine Wow, a decent honest human being and a generous one at that, they do exist!

Al,
Nice to hear of a good story of someone who doesn't want to rip you off! That man is a good egg. Shows how some of these garages isn't always on the level ! They know most people can't fix them these days and take advantage.
I bet many cars are scrapped unnecessarily!

When DS was small, a friend of mine came round with her little girl. The kids played beautifully by themselves upstairs, mostly playing hide and seek, while we had a cuppa and a chat.
After our friends went home, I went to wash up and there was no hot water. I also couldn't get the heating to come on. I called an emergency plumber for the next day. The first thing he did was check that the system was switched on and it wasn't...turns out there's a switch in the airing cupboard and one of the kids must have pressed it while playing hide and seek.
It cost me £100 for a guy to come out and basically flip a switch. Most expensive play date ever!

Went to London for a Grayson Perry exhibition. Went into the gallery only to find a different exhibition. Asked at the desk and they googled it. We were 11 years late...note to self read web pages properly

All these companies charging hundreds to just put a switch on ! It is a rip off and i know many can't waive the costs as they work for companies who won't let them do this. It's not always the repair persons fault , but it still rankles.
Especially as we're told we can't touch electrics or gas as well so we have to the experts round if not sure what's wrong.
My boiler is only two years old and it's already had someone out to replace something , but it's under warranty for years. Nothing seems to last these days and it all costs thousands to replace too.

@thenightsky my dh left a coat on an internal flight, he'd only had it a month.
I was thrilled he never got it back, it was the most old fashioned, horrible coat I've ever seen. I don't know what possessed him to buy it.

We have a lot of unexpected and annoying costs because my stepson is so very clumsy and thoughtless.

It sounds silly, because he is generally a nice lad - he just doesn't think before he does things, or think what might happen if he goes ahead and carries on with whatever he's doing.

He's broken the microwave by putting a tin foil container in it, putting it on for five minutes and going upstairs.

He's scratched the brand new kitchen work top by cutting bread to make toast without a plate/chopping board underneath, so now there's a nice big scratch from the breadknife which I haven't had chance to fix yet.

He's ripped open the fabric breakfast bar chair trying to squeeze his bike through the back door (it really doesn't fit, he should take it round the side of the house through the gate).

He's somehow pulled out a (well fitted) drawer when putting cutlery away, literally the thing came completely out, crashed to the floor and cracked across the bottom .. so then the front didn't fit anymore even when we tried to repair it .. and the kitchen has been discontinued at B&Q so we can't get a new one!

Ran and flopped onto the sofa in his room and fell straight through it (he's a big lad and has been warned to just sit gently).

Honestly it sounds like a nightmare but it seems that he's not doing it maliciously, it's just he's clumsy, and shouting at him for it doesn't make the slightest bit of difference! And of course it costs us an absolute fortune!

@Whatisthisfuckery

I bought tickets to see Gorillas in Birmingham. We went to the christmas market beforehand and had a few beers. Then we checked into the hotel and my girlfriend, now ex, said she couldn’t find the tickets. I pulled her bag apart looking and couldn’t find them either. We got on the train home, sat in our seats and girlfriend looked in her coat pocket for something, and found the tickets.

So that was about £130 for tickets, £50 for the train, about £20 on taxis to the hotel and £75 for the hotel, all down the drain.

I was very understanding about it, didn’t have a go at her or anything. I just laughed it off as there was no point getting upset about it, then she bloody had a go at me and blamed me for making her get too pissed to remember where she’d put the tickets. As if I could make a 43 year old woman get pissed, I’d even told her not to have the third pint but she insisted she wanted it.

That is one of the reasons why she is now an ex.

Why didn't you stay in the hotel

My most recent one. I had a really nice L shape sofa, snug chair and smaller chair in storage. Family friend was in need of new furniture so said they could buy mine off me for £300. I"d only used it for about 4 month (was brand new).. I even offered to collect it for them at no extra cost in my van. They were following in car but I lost them. I pulled in and waited, when they were in sight I pulled out.. low and behind a car was in my blind spot! That cost me £420. Car was a write off as it was a battered focus and the guy bought it back from insurance for couple of hundred. I would have rather gave him a couple of hundred quid! X