I was up at 5am today to finish writing a report I didn't get to over the weekend. As hard as it is to wake up and be on a deadline first thing on a Monday morning, there's just some part of me that refuses to do work on a weekend. So by 8am the report was finished and emailed, and so began the regular monday morning internet surfing - Facebook, Twitter, The Shazanne Show, etc.
After a weekend of Mother's Day and meals out and about, I thought I would check our bank account to see the damage and work out what we had to play with for the rest of the week. And also to see if Shan's government stimulus payment had been deposited (mine came last week - half a credit card paid off wooo!).
When the internet banking page opened I was confused. I double-checked our savings account and then our everday account again. I yelled out to Shan - "baby, there's an extra lump o' cash in our account!" She came to see what I was yelling about and we realised our account had been debited with several thousand dollars overnight. We figured maybe our bond had been repaid sooner than expected, but that didn't work out, this was much more than anything we were owed. We started to get excited but then calmed down, thinking we'd better work out exactly where it came from in case it was a mistake and it wasn't ours to play with.
Some investigating found the money had been deposited by the Australian Taxation Office, which we both figured had to be a mistake since we'd both received our tax returns last year and it was much more than the stimulus payment we were still waiting on. I called them to check, part of me wanting to know, the other just wanting to say 'thanks!' before transferring it to savings, hoping they never realised their mistake. I got a really friendly guy on the phone who checked it out and after a few questions and answers he kinda giggled and said "yay the money is really yours!". I giggled with him, thanked him for his help and turned to tell Shan the good news.
Last year I put in a tax return for the 2005-06 tax year that I hadn't done before I went to London. I got a letter back saying I owed the ATO about $2,500. Freaked out, I called them and another lovely guy explained to me what I'd done wrong and told me how to put in an amendment. The amendment, he said, would take 2-3 months to process. So it was more like 6 months, but it turns out the amendment went through and they were able to pay me the money I was really owed. I had completely forgotten about the amendment!
Shan and I danced around the computer room, ecstatic that we'd just doubled our Canada savings in one day! We've been kinda floating all day and are finally starting to see some reality in what seemed like such a far away dream just a few weeks ago. Having this huge injection into our savings means we can breathe easy now and by sticking to our current budget, we'll have more than we had hoped to start our new life in Vancouver.
For the first time ever, Shan and I were able to look at each other and say "we're really going" without trying to convince ourselves it was true. We're really going.
After a weekend of Mother's Day and meals out and about, I thought I would check our bank account to see the damage and work out what we had to play with for the rest of the week. And also to see if Shan's government stimulus payment had been deposited (mine came last week - half a credit card paid off wooo!).
When the internet banking page opened I was confused. I double-checked our savings account and then our everday account again. I yelled out to Shan - "baby, there's an extra lump o' cash in our account!" She came to see what I was yelling about and we realised our account had been debited with several thousand dollars overnight. We figured maybe our bond had been repaid sooner than expected, but that didn't work out, this was much more than anything we were owed. We started to get excited but then calmed down, thinking we'd better work out exactly where it came from in case it was a mistake and it wasn't ours to play with.
Some investigating found the money had been deposited by the Australian Taxation Office, which we both figured had to be a mistake since we'd both received our tax returns last year and it was much more than the stimulus payment we were still waiting on. I called them to check, part of me wanting to know, the other just wanting to say 'thanks!' before transferring it to savings, hoping they never realised their mistake. I got a really friendly guy on the phone who checked it out and after a few questions and answers he kinda giggled and said "yay the money is really yours!". I giggled with him, thanked him for his help and turned to tell Shan the good news.
Last year I put in a tax return for the 2005-06 tax year that I hadn't done before I went to London. I got a letter back saying I owed the ATO about $2,500. Freaked out, I called them and another lovely guy explained to me what I'd done wrong and told me how to put in an amendment. The amendment, he said, would take 2-3 months to process. So it was more like 6 months, but it turns out the amendment went through and they were able to pay me the money I was really owed. I had completely forgotten about the amendment!
Shan and I danced around the computer room, ecstatic that we'd just doubled our Canada savings in one day! We've been kinda floating all day and are finally starting to see some reality in what seemed like such a far away dream just a few weeks ago. Having this huge injection into our savings means we can breathe easy now and by sticking to our current budget, we'll have more than we had hoped to start our new life in Vancouver.
For the first time ever, Shan and I were able to look at each other and say "we're really going" without trying to convince ourselves it was true. We're really going.
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