This week is looking up thankfully, as the last week and a bit had been pretty dismal. They say bad things come in three’s and I think that’s about right. First of all I had a lovely Sunday planned with Donna, one of my best chums who I don’t get to see that often. We were planning on meeting in Arundel for a walk around the lake, a look at the Castle and a spot of lunch, the kids get on well and it would give us a chance to catch up. I probably had about three hours sleep as Arlo was suffering with a bad cold and cough overnight, and when I was filling the car up with fuel before we set off on our day out I stupidly put petrol in my diesel car. It’s something I have never done before (and hopefully not likely to do again either!) and the worst thing was I didn’t even realise I had done it until I had driven a few miles up the road and started to wonder why the car wasn’t behaving as it should do! Thankfully I managed to pull over into the gateway of a field and turn the engine off! Putting petrol in a diesel engine is not just a daft thing to do, it is a time consuming and expensive thing to do too!
I called my husband who was planning a leisurely day with his ps4 and explained how thick I had been, he then called the RAC for me as I didn’t have the details on me (another daft thing to do, drive around without the RAC card in the car!) who then called me back to explain as it was the London to Brighton vintage car race that the guy who deals with the fuel pumping wouldn’t be able to get to me till mid afternoon, this was at 9.45am! They did say that we could get a tow back to our own home and wait for the fuel change over to be done later on though. He had three more idiots (sorry, people who had put the wrong fuel in their car) in front of me to sort out apparently! At this point I started to panic a little as I was sat in a cold car, on a busy 60mph road with no pavements and two small kids, and a good 4 mile walk to the nearest anywhere useful! Thankfully Sam had called his friend up who came to our rescue! First he picked Sam up so he could wait in our broken down car for the recovery truck, and then he took me and the kids on to Arundel to meet Donna! Friends like these are hard to come by folks, so if you’ve got one then you’re very lucky! (Thanks Kyle!)
By the time he’d dropped us off the recovery vehicle had towed our car off the main road, so Sam and his friend Kyle decided to see if they could fix my costly mistake themselves, and as it turns out with some tools they already had and a container of diesel they managed to drain the petrol out (which they could use on the boat so no major loss there) and they cleaned the fuel pump up and we were good to go again! This saved us a whopping £250 that the RAC were going to charge, and meant that the £60 of petrol I had mistakenly pumped didn’t go to waste! £310 is a lot of money to have to spend out without warning, and if I had to have paid out would have been the most expensive mistake I’ve ever made I think! I did get to spend a day in Arundel though, so it ended well!
Later in the same week we were stung with an extra £380 on a previous quote for a couple of replacement windows as the original quotes didn’t cover some timber something or other, which is yet another chunk of money we didn’t expect to have to pay out, on top of a week when we’ve just starting getting quotes for new carpets. Money really is the root of a lot of stress, and I think it always will be! Oh, and the third thing isn’t about money, both Arlo and I got a horrible sick bug, we both felt rotten for a while and managed to pass it on to my MIL who was visiting too!
Thankfully we have a small amount of savings for things like this this but many people aren’t in a position to save at all! Payplans unfortunate week page shows just how easy it is for your money to disappear on things like car repairs and vets bills. If you are really struggling make ends meet then an IVA could be a way to help you get back on your feet with money management if things have got too hard to manage, its a way for your debtors to receive some of what is owed, as opposed to nothing if you declare yourself bankrupt. You still may a monthly amount that is agreed upon up front, and no more interest can be added to your debt.
This is a partnered post. All words and opinions are my own.
We seem to have weeks like this, I always say that the gremlins have come to play. I hope things get better xxx