DH and childcare account

[okayokaywhatsnext]

DH has the government gateway account to arrange the tax free childcare account. I can’t access it and can’t create my own account. He’s just told me that he didn’t realise that he had to revalidate our status every 3 months in order to continue to receive the government top ups so for 12 months we have not been receiving them. That’s about £2,000 we’ve missed out on. He didn’t notice that we didn’t have the right amount going out because around the same time we temporarily reduced DD’s hours at nursery while I’m on mat leave/sabbatical but kept paying the maximum amount into the account in order to make full use of the top up so the outgoing payments didn’t fail, just the build up.

He is refusing to accept responsibility because apparently it wasn’t obvious from the site that you had to revalidate. I cannot believe he’s being so casual about this loss of money. He constantly goes on about saving and complains about my occasional takeaway coffees etc. I just can’t believe he’s been so lax with this.

Well you can use this for years can't you - "another Costa okayokay? "
"Remember the tax free childcare?"
or, calculate how many coffees it would take to make up the two grand he's just cost the family. I don't know if he's right that it's hard to know you needed to renew, maybe it was - someone on here might know!

I'm pretty sure you would get constantly emailed about it... Did he not get any?!

They email you when you need to revalidate ...so looks like he knew at some point but it slipped his mind

They email you and it's obvious when you log in that you have a deadline to validate by.

I get emails and text messages when it’s approaching time to revalidate mine and you keep getting them until you do it.

It's made really clear on the website and you get reminders via email - no excuse for him I'm afraid!!

I get a text and email to remind me.

Oh bloody hell. He’s one of those people with 30,000 unread emails. At work he gets away with this because it’s a phone call industry but it has caused him problems at home before now.

Are you sure he didn’t do the necessary, got paid, frittered the money away, and is now claiming he never got the money to start with?

I can understand you are angry with him I would be too but you can't change it now nor can you get the money back. Going forward you should set a reminder on your phone around the time it's due to review and remind him to sign in to confirm. Not ideal I know but it's the only way if you cant create an account of your own.

make sure YOU have access to it from now on - take some financial responsibility and independence back.
Making you feel shit over cups of fucking coffee but yet so lax in his own financial management skills???

Yes he’s shown me the account. It’s all in there just not the top ups. He’s also gone back through his email and found 3 email reminders and 2 texts. I’m furious.

I can’t get access to the govt gateway account because my taxes don’t go through HMRC because of my job.

It pains me to admit this but I once spent 10 hours sorting out my husbands work email because he didn’t delete anything just filed some stuff he needed.

Thousands and thousands of emails, it was ridiculous - but he has kept it under 100 every since (3 years ago)

He needs a day and just has to do it because there’s no way he isn’t missing work stuff as well.

It's a shame you can't take over and deal with it going forwards. Nothing you can do about the past though.

Can't you just log in using his details?
I'd be fuming though at losing £2k though.

Isn’t it just depressing that the only way to sort it is to do it for him?

Yes it is :(