Last year, I lent my sister some money to pay the tuition fees for her MA. It was money I had from an inheritance. My sister had received the same amount, but couldn’t release it until her 25th birthday. It made sense to both of us for me to lend her the money until she could release her inheritance and pay me back in time for the wedding and some other stuff. However she approached the solicitor in December and he still hasn’t sorted out the release. When she phoned him (after him not returning her calls for 2 weeks) he told her he forgot. All of this wouldn’t be a problem, but for the fact that I wanted to maximise my tax free savings allowance for this year – and the deadline is the 5th of April. He has now told her there is no way he can clear the money by that date. So now, I can’t decide what to do. Do I miss out on my allowance for this year? Or do I scrape together every penny I can from my current account and the easy access savings I have for emergencies and heap it into my allowance pot? And take a risk that this cash will clear before I incur any other major expenses so that I can pay myself back? It’s not too much of a risk – because in a real emergency I can always take this money out of my tax free savings. I just can’t put it back again, because the limit is on how much you can pay in any one year and not how much you can have in it. Another advantage would be that once the money cleared, if I found that I had managed to pay back my emergency account out of my regular income, I could put it straight into next year’s allowance. The main downside to this is that apart from my student loan payment I would have to reduce my outgoings to almost nothing until payday in the middle of next month. I pay all my bills the day after pay day so it is only small incidental stuff left to come out, but the idea of having no safety net, for however short a time, worries me! It’s one thing not buying anything for 10 days, it’s quite another not being able to!
A fool and my money
March 22nd, 2006 at 07:23 pm
March 22nd, 2006 at 08:32 pm 1143059573
March 23rd, 2006 at 04:17 pm 1143130630
March 23rd, 2006 at 04:35 pm 1143131741
Make sure that the requests are always sent via a mail delivery that requests signatures. He cannot not reply to that. Oh and request a follow up answer in ten business days or less. That will keep a fire under him.