Other What's ruining your life right now?

Yeah mine had a pet lizard for a while!!!

 

It's a bit late now, but some towns have rentable garage workshops, complete with lift.

 

A close friend of mine attempted suicide last night by overdose. He called me before, I expected a drunken call of 'Hey man, thanks for having my back through all this ****...' Instead he told me he wasn't strong enough anymore and basically broke down, He had a rough childhood, destructive relationships and now his grandmother was diagnosed with cancer (again). Natural instinct would be to try calm that person down but having tried twice previous It was to get to him as soon as humanly possible. He'd gone to a friends house for the evening drinking and was clearly in no sound mind to be making these sort of decisions. 2am I found myself sprinting out the door into the pouring rain.

Went to his house, the door was unlocked. Let myself in... nobody there. Spent the next few hours in the pouring rain looking for any possible place he could have gone. Bridges, areas of any sort of height, rivers... occasionally managing to get through to him, by 3:30am ... radio silence... nothing... not answer. at 5am dripping wet and basically coming to terms with the possibility he'd actually been successful this time (third attempt) I got the buzz he'd been taken into hospital. It was a mixture of relief and utter frustration. He'd swallowed 27 paracetemol and 6 ibuprofen with a cocktail of spirits just to try put the final nail in.

To top this off I'm dangerously close to my own nervous breakdown and the only temporary solution I've found is in the bottom of a bottle. I can't maintain my mood and a visit to the GP was either 'Here's this leaflet about depression, Stress & Anxiety' but if it gets worse 'Here's some pills' I felt rather stupid for even wasting the mans time. Its taken me 6 years to admit something wasn't necessarily right I just hadn't anticipated how I was going to fix it.

So much for my relaxing weekend.

 

You know, I never thought of that, certainly something to keep in mind for next time.

Managed to drill the pin out after many expletives. Got the new disc on and done.

Bad news is the other side is exactly the same so didn't have time to sort it out today. taking it to a garage is looking rather tempting right now.

Although looking at the post above, this problem doesn't seem quite that bad anymore.

 

Tax returns.

Apparently I've underpaid this year and owe Her Majesty's Finest just shy of £200. Any taxable income I've received has gone through PAYE, as I'm employed full-time. I also apparently owe National Insurance Contributions for 2014-2015 from a self-employed company that has for several years filed a zero return because it's not actually earned anything.

Of course I've left it to the last minute (because this should only be a 5 minute job), and it's my father's funeral tomorrow; fat chance of getting through to HMRC on deadline day (31st) to argue with someone, so I'm probably going to have to swallow this charge or I'll just end up owing them even more money.

The irony is that my self assessment showed that I overpaid for 2014-2015 and I had a refund.

 

Pay first and argue/claim after? That way they can't hit you for the £100/day fine or whatever it is...

 

USB cables. I know the specs of USB cables and I want to buy some USB cables to make my own USB Cables, but USB cables isn't a good search term because every time I search for USB cables I get USB cables, when I actually want USB cables.

 

F**k sake.....
I've had bad times and tried to give up but your friends situation sounds bad, I hope the hospital refer him for help, but as for yourself, don't loose control, seek help anywhere, I found unexpected support from friends I thought I lost contact with. The Samaritans are a good start.

You've opened up here which is great!
Take care, we're here for you

 

food poisoning.

**** i cant remember the last time i was this bad

 

Maybe we should start a chart on bit-tech of those paying extra and those getting back to see whether we or the taxman wins (I won a little this year, wife owes them £4k, ouch)?

Re the NI payments - paying these is probably of more value as they'll just turn off your pension when you get old if you don't have full contributions.

 

Digikey?

 

Are not USB cables Cat5 or 6 cabling?

 

To my amazement, I actually managed to get through to someone at the tax office to speak to them. This is pretty much their advice: he's going to follow it up once they actually receive my submission (it takes a few days to come through), because he couldn't find any fault with the tax I paid through PAYE and couldn't work out why the online system says I've underpaid.

I pay NICs through PAYE - in theory I shouldn't owe a penny. Though this debt was likely from my self-assessment last year; if your business earns less than a certain amount (and my self-employed business earns zero) then you don't have to pay NICs, but you can voluntarily pay it. IIRC it defaults to voluntary payment, and I probably didn't change the option. In any case I'm paying that debt through PAYE in the current tax year, so it doesn't affect my return for last year (or so the guy I spoke to at HMRC advised).

 

I've no idea. It could be, my wages would have certainly gone up (albeit only by a very small percentage) between 2014-2015 and 2015-2016.

What's complicating matters here is that I work full-time for an employer who pays me via PAYE and I'm registered as having a second self-employed business. That second self-employed business has made zero turnover - literally zero, I haven't done anything with it in nearly 2 years. But because I have declared this I now have to complete a self-assessment, even though my primary source of income is via PAYE. In theory this should be simple: declare a zero return for the self-employed company, and use figures from P11D and P60 for my full-time employment. That's is exactly what I've done, and what I entered agrees with the records that HMRC has received from my employer.

My return last year was a doddle: enter all the relevant figures from my P60 and P11D and hey presto, done - they even owed me money. But apparently the overpayment refund I had last year and the unpaid Class 2 NICs I owe are not affecting the calculations for 2015-2016 because they have already been accounted for.

If I'd actually done anything with this self-employed business - or self-employment was my only source of income - I would have spoken to an accountant about this long ago, and I wouldn't be fretting about it on Deadline Day. When this financial year is over I'm going to file my return as soon as I have my P60 & P11D, and maybe it's time I speak to an accountant anyway.

 

I don't know a whole lot about tax, but I do know you can get over payments back. So I would say just pay up now and try and claim it back later when your head is in a better place.

 

I don't object to paying it, I just want to know what I'm paying for! It's all on HMRC now anyway.

 

Self inflicted sinus infection

Friday night I was punching holes in the bottom of the cabinet over the bed to install lights and did a bunch of cutting with the jigsaw without putting on my mask. Woke up Saturday morning with a horrible sore throat which has developed into a full blown sinus infection.

Sucks to be me

 

Lack of self discipline.

Against my better judgement, I continued experimenting with my new coffee machine and drinking espressos well into the evening. It's now gone 2am and I'm about as far from feeling tired as is legally possible.

No sleep till bedtime.

 

At least you'll be hyper aware of how little you're getting done.