Financially, I’ve had quite tough month. A lot of money has gone on things that I can’t even see.

In late January, I went into the overdraft of my account by £6, and my bank saw fit to charge me £30 for admin fees. I’m not quite sure how they worked this one out. I’m sure it didn’t cost them £30 to send the letter to me to advise me of this fine. Beyond that, they didn’t do anything else, so to charge me £30 to send a letter in the post, to advise me of this charge, seems a little steep. Can’t they just, not bother sending the letter in the first place and save themselves the effort of their extensive admin work and save me £30?

Secondly, I my car had its MOT this month. Even though it passed, I still had to get a tyre replaced. I also had to pay my car tax. This came to about £99 for 6 months. So in total, my car cost me around £200. If I include my monthly car insurance into it, my car has cost me a grand total of £270 this month. Whilst I begrudge the tax and insurance, this is a sacrifice I am willing to make.

Thirdly, our council tax also came out this month, unexpectedly. Now, when we set up our council tax, we promptly sent the Direct Debit mandate to them, but for reasons best left known to themselves, they set it up 2 months later, which in effect, led to our monthly payments going up to £160.

Still, at least I know my contributions to the councils bank accounts is being used efficiently. They’ve recently placed 2 speedbumps in my local neighbourhood (without consulting the local residents I might add), which, you can easily drive in between, thus rendering them, completely pointless. Yes, that’s money well spent.

I just hope March will be better...