So, saga:
When I moved into my house several years ago, I had to take over the lease because the house was empty. This was a last resort, as I'd been trying (and failing) to find a room in an existing share-house. This meant that for the two months it took me to find housemates, I was paying full rent for the house - A$1300 a month. I moved into the house in September; in Australia, tax returns are due on the 31st of October. Now, this is relevant because I operate effectively as a small business (or, technically, a "sole trader") which in the annoying Australian taxation system means I automatically get put into the "pay all your tax off in one lump-sum at the end of the year" pile. So when I moved into my house in September I had several thousand dollars saved up, which was my tax.
That all got spent on rent, instead.
So when it came time to pay my tax, I had to enter a payment scheme with the tax office, whereby I paid them money every fortnight to pay off my tax debt.
This was money that I was supposed to be saving up to pay off my next yearly tax amount . . . See a vicious cycle emerging here?
At the same time, unbeknownst to me, the tax office was sending bills to my old address - even though they had my current address (hint hint, tax office: it's the address I put on my tax return.) So last year, I had a steadily accumulating tax debt, gaining nice fat interest every month, because one part of the tax office can't communicate with another part of the tax office and update my address details. Eventually they managed to send the letters to the right address, and hey hey! Guess who has to pay off five grand of tax debt??
In the meantime, up until last year my work had been erratic at best in paying me on time, not to mention the amount they paid me. I work as a contractor for the public service, which means I get paid by the hour, which means when there's not much work around there's not much pay for me. This happened quite a lot. On top of that, sometimes my invoices would get lost in the bowels of the public service bureaucracy, and I'd have to wait up to three weeks longer than usual to get paid. These two things combined meant that I frequently had to resort to buying basic groceries on my credit card. And we all know where that road leads to.
Now, the icing on the debt cake is the holiday I just went on with my dad a few weeks ago. I've always maintained that if you're going to get into debt, do it traveling, and I have absolutely no regrets about hitting up my credit card to go on a three-week holiday in Sweden and Finland, because, hey, come on. But the upshot of it, after everything else that's been going on over the last few years that I've just described above, is that I have a credit card debt of A$6500, plus I owe my dad about A$3000 for the aeroplane ticket and various travel costs (hotels, meals, etc.). So I'm about ten grand in the hole.
Well, just a few minutes ago, completely unexpectedly, I got a call from my mum. My grandfather, her father, whom we all loved dearly and who I lived with for most of 2003, died a year or so ago, and my mum was ringing up to tell me that his house has been sold, and that she'd deposited A$5000 into my bank-account and had a cheque for a further A$20,000 to give me when I come up to Canberra this weekend to visit her and dad. This is my inheritance.
Holy fuck. Holy holy fuck. I'm debt-free! I can't fucking believe it.
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Topic: Whatever, Let's Have A Goddamn Blog Thread, But Try And Keep It Reasonable (Read 767770 times)