Dom Davis (The Blog)

I’ve blogged before (on a previous blog I think) about emails from Camelot regarding lottery tickets. My argument was that the subject line was graded so you’d know at a glance if you were looking at a life changing win, a windfall or chump change. I’m not sure if Camelot have heeded my advice, but I’m sure the emails used to say “Good news…” rather than just “News…”. Perhaps the good is now reserved for larger amounts. I don’t know. I’ve not won any.

What I have discovered is that the thrill, excitement and anticipation I used to have on receiving those tickets has been replaced with jaded cynicism. No longer do I wonder if I’m an overnight millionaire, now I just assume £10. The reason is pure and simple. With the exception of one time when I matched 4 numbers and got £60 something I have either received £10 (lotto), £5 (thunderball – which I no longer play) or some pathetic amount like £2.67 (Euromillions, which for me has really been Europence with a total winnings of under £10).

Of late we’ve rather been on a bit of a winning streak with 3 lotto wins (totalling £30) and two Europence wins (totalling just over a fiver) which seems to have turned me into an ungrateful bastard. After all, £35 is better than a swift kick in the teeth and it means we’re only a few quid down on those two months (£9 per month lotto via direct debit and £18 spent on Europence). But no, the green monster looks at the odd couple who won one hundred and something stupid million and seven fucking pence (because when you’re that rich 7p is important) and says “why couldn’t that be us? We have a baby to house and a desperate desire to replace work with a series of five star adventure holidays round the world, we deserve that money!”. I mean, have you seen how much it costs to go on safari in Africa? And I mean properly on Safari, not slumming it. It’s close to £100,000 for a month. That’s not going to happen without a proper Lottery win.

So yes, Camelot have got it right now; it is news about my ticket. Hey ho. There’s always Saturdays draw.

This morning we made the executive decision that we were going to have to rent. Little Cottage is really too small for 3 people and Willow has got to an age where we need to put her to bed and leave her to it. This means having to retire to the bedroom as she lives in the living room. We need a room to put her in where I don’t have to worry that cooking my dinner will disturb her and where we still have space to relax and unwind at the end of the day.

Sadly, despite owning two properties, I’m not really in a position to sell. My flat is still in negative equity (although less than it was) and I’d really like to see it go up in price another £40K before I sell it, something that could take a few years. Little Cottage has held its value, but moving is expensive and I’d like to recoup that.

A plan that solved everything did materialise out of the death of my grandmother since the money left to me easily covered the cost of buying a third property and would allow us to simply rent out Little Cottage and, in a few years time when the housing market was out of the toilet, consolidate the 3 houses into a forever home. Sadly illness in the family has meant sorting of the will is taking rather longer than expected and we can no longer wait.

The interim solution is, of course, to rent a place ourselves. The initial outlay is less meaning our savings are intact should we not have tenants in our properties, or if they need work, and it’s cheaper than the repayment in the mortgage we’d need to get on a similar property so we can continue to save for a future purchase.

I rather suspect we will end up in a soulless 1980s box, but it will be a soulless 1980s box with a room for guests (and my desk and a computer), a room for Willow, a parking space and a garden that delivery drivers can find without detailed directions and me standing outside. I’ve no doubt The Zozo will start looking today, but we plan to start looking in earnest this weekend. Scarily this means we could be moving in a matter of weeks! Thankfully, since we’re not selling we can take our time moving out, and then, when it’s empty, get Little Cottage tarted up ready to rent out. This takes a lot of the stress out of proceedings.

I have two savings accounts. With the economy being in the toilet as it is these don’t so much offer an ROI as a handful of pennies for each grand squirrelled away in them. I would put the money in our ISA, but that’s full too – plus I never really know how long you need to leave the money in it to qualify for interest, I just seem to get some cash lobbed into it by the bank every year. Ironically enough the best rate of interest is on my current account, but that’s capped on the first few grand and I get to pay lots of tax on it.

The solution, it would seem, is to have a child. Willow now has an account that gives 3% on the first £20,000 and, while I’ll need to investigate the tax situation, I’m pretty sure I can get out of giving huge chunks of the interest to the government. Given we may also get money every month from the government (the jury is out as to whether “not means tested” means “not means tested” or “not mean tested below a certain income threshold, so really means tested”) Willow could be turning to a sound investment… or at least not quite as crazy an expenditure as she could be.

I’ve been on holiday over the past week, hence the scarcity of posts. I’ve also been given a deadline for reviewing a friends book which has helped push things from “meaning to do” to “actually doing” so posting may also flip to afternoons (not that anyone cares).

What you do care about, because it’s desperately interesting, is that work should have started on our roof. The house is clad in scaffolding front and back and, hopefully, vast sections of our rather poorly tiled roof should actually now be properly tiled and do amazing things like stop water. This does, unfortunately, involve parting with rather a large number of pieces of paper emblazoned with pictures of Her Maj., and adorned with swirly patterns and the number 20. Something I could do without, but needs must and everything. In order to help pay for this one of the things I need to progress from “meaning to do” to “actually doing” is eBaying the vast array of stuff in the loft. There’s also a ruddy great big telly residing at the Zoo which will probably need flogging at some point. I wonder if I can pay the roofer in my electrical cast offs

I have now bought the plane tickets for our holiday and was indeed correct in thinking that I’d not be able to use all my discounts in one go.

After speaking to a very helpful lady I was told that I could use miles + money (basically £100 off for 7,200 airmiles), get transferred through to the Virgin partners line where I could discuss my staff discount or have them call me back when the free upgrade tickets were released which wouldn’t be for a few months.

A little more probing and I discovered that the only tickets you could upgrade were quite expensive to begin with. In the end I went for the staff discount option. It’s the same price as miles + money but doesn’t cost me any airmiles. I also got all four tickets saving us £400 or so, which was nice.

What was a little surprising is that I get 30% off the flights. Looking at a ticket price of £640ish I was expecting to see the price be much less than the £540odd it was. Of course that’s not just the ticket price is it? No, there’s taxes and god knows what else in there too and sadly I don’t get 30% off that.

Given I bought the tickets on my virgin credit card and given their all trips that are eligible for miles and given I didn’t spend any miles buying them I think The Zozo and I now have something like 40,000 airmiles between us. We’re unlikely to spend these on flights before they expire so I may end up converting them into vouchers for wine from my employers. There’s a certain amount of irony there.

No blog yesterday as I had to drive into work. Unlike blogging and commuting on a train, blogging and commuting in a car first work. At least not if you’re the driver.

On the way back home the car went beep and the little petrol warning light went on. Since I normally fill the car up well before this happens, and since we don’t drive all that often, the beeping confused the hell out of me initially. A few seconds later and I’d worked it out and was being told the car now had a range of 49 miles. No problem, the garage I was going to stop at was less than 10 miles away.

5 minutes later at 50mph and the car was telling me 52 miles range. Clearly not the most accurate of fuel gauges and/or algorithms. I’ve no idea what it was telling me when I finally pulled into the garage (probably 100+ miles) but I don’t think I was in any danger of running dry. That said, it was the emptiest it’s been in a long time.

Now if you’d asked me there and then how much it costs to fill the tank I’d have told you just over £30. There’s a bit left in there so probably £32. Nope. In went the hose, up went the trigger, in went the fuel. £30 came and went, rapidly followed by £32, £34, £36 and £38. When it hit £40 I did a quick check just in case I was trying to fill the wrong car. I mean, £40 worth of fuel is for big cars, not little ones. *clunk*. The tank was finally full. £42.18!

So it would seem that, from dry, it now costs somewhere in the region of £45 to fill the tank. Maybe I’d better actually start taking notice of petrol prices instead of just whacking in fuel when I’m near a garage and the tank is two-thirds empty.

Goron, I dread to think how much your car costs to fill. Or how much pressing the loud peddle must cost.

As has been mentioned before it can get a little windy outside our house. The pterodactyl table has survived unscathed, but then it is the second largest structure in Cromer behind the church. The bin store hasn’t been coping as well.

The front of the store is a panel 1 wheely bin high, and over 2 wheely bins wide. It’s large, heavy, cumbersome and acts like a sail in the wind. It’s long since ripped out the hook and eye fasteners that used to hold it in place and it’s now secured with string. Literally. And if you don’t double up the loops of string fasting it then the wind can catch it and *whump* it’s on the floor. Again. The Zozo and I hate it.

This weekend has been particularly windy and I’m bored of picking the damn thing up. It’s time for a proper, purpose built bin store. I think I’m going to ask for contributions towards the one I want (it’s nearly £300) for my birthday.

So we’re going to Barbodos Well, we’ve booked a hotel in Barbados. We’ve still got to book the flights. I’m hanging fire on that because it’s going to require talking to a booking agent. Not for us the basic going onto the website, putting in of the details and the paying of the cash, oh no. Here’s what I’d like to happen:

• I have 21,000 odd Virgin Atlantic airmiles. My wife has 9,000 odd. I work for Virgin Group. What I hope can happen is the following:
• I gift 11,000 airmiles to my wife for £180.
• I book two (2) economy flights with a 30% discount for being a Virgin Group employee.
• I spend 40,000 points (20,000 per account) to upgrade the economy seats to premium economy.

Here’s what I suspect will happen:

• I will not be allowed to upgrade the flights because it’ll need to be on a qualifying flight and the flight isn’t qualifying.
• and/or I wont be able to use my Virgin group discount in conjunction with airmiles.
• and/or The Virgin Group discount will need to be on a qualifying flight and the flight isn’t qualifying.

Regardless, I should be able, at the very minimum, do miles + money for both of us and/or get the Virgin Group discount, so I wont be paying full price even if we do have to go pleb class.

I also need to work out what to do with all the leftover points if I can’t spend the vast majority of them on this trip as they expire. Anyway, I’ll know more once I’ve phoned them

The gym I attend isn’t the cheapest in the world. It’s not the biggest, or the best equipped either. What it is, though, is quiet and the staff are friendly. Quite often I’ll have the entire gym and pool to myself. It also seems that they take forever to make the membership cards, but that seems to have worked in my favour. I renewed my membership in November, went regularly until mid December and then, for one reason or another, haven’t been back until today. At some point during that hiatus they finally sorted my membership card and, because it had been noticed I hadn’t been for a while, added a month onto the membership for free. Which was nice.

The gout does unfortunately mean I’m just in the pool at the moment, but I made up for it by doing 60 laps in 3 tranches of 20 with a session in the sauna in between each. I should probably point out that the pool is only 18m long so it’s not quite as impressive as it sounds but, assuming I don’t cease up overnight, I plan on going again tomorrow.

Once again the 31st of January is loomin and, once again, letter from Her Majesties Blood Letters and Flesh Collectors are sending threatening letters about the fines and interest if I don’t file my tax return and pay any tax owed¹ by the end in the month.

Unlike the days of yore this years panic is nothing to do with me being too scared², lazy or disorganised to hand my tax return and has everything to do with the management company for my flat and my mortgage company.

My accountant had most of the paperwork she needed 6 months ago. In fact, I was so organised that she was very impressed. Everything was filed neatly, receipts with attached to purchase orders, things were grouped and put into clear plastic pouches and everything put into a folder for her. All that was missing was the details of the service charge and mortgage for my flat which was problematic because they both work December to December. With that I promised to send the information as soon as I had it and we left it at that.

The management company sent the 2010 details through early this month and I emailed those to the accountant with a note saying I knew we were still waiting on the mortgage company and I’d sent it as soon as.

It’s now mid January and still nothing. So I called them. Before being put through to the customer services operator I was told, via the medium of recorded message, that statements were being posted between early January and the 28th of February. Great. So not only do they do their paperwork at a hideously inconvenient time, they then wait until it’s potentially too late to tell me. The girl on the phone told me if I called back with a few details they’d be able to read the information I needed out over the phone. Somehow I can’t help but think that just posting the mortgage statements before the end of January would be cheaper than having staff spend ages on the phone calculating details needed for peoples tax returns. Lunacy.

Anyway, at least for next year³ I know I can call them and will do so May sometime. In the mean time I await my draft accounts and, more importantly, the discovery of how much I owe the tax man. It’s not something I’m looking forward to.

¹The Inland Revenue, unlike the law courts, work on the premise of guilty until proven innocent. If they think you owe them money fines and daily interest are accrued. Ignorance is no excuse. If, in the other hand, you are owed money the onus is often on you to prove it. When you finally receive the cash no interest is paid on it. This explains why people are always so happy to get a tax rebate as if it’s a gift, despite it bring money the government has stolen from you which they’re now returning without interest.

²The Inland Bastard Fucking Revenue (as they were then) and I had a big fight some years back. I won, bur only after much stress and investing several thousand in my accountant over a period of two months. The irony being that I was in the wrong which just goes to prove the system is hideously overcomplicated and prone to exploitation by those with the money to afford very good (and creative) accountants.

³And by next year I, of course, mean this year, in about 6 months time.