As you might have picked up, I’m in sixth year now and, like most people in my year, I’m trying desperately to save up to do lots of fun things with my friends next summer (in my case, camping, T in the Park and the Edinburgh Fringe) while still being able to do fun things before then. I’m also trying to manage this without a regular, paying job.
Until about two weeks ago all my money was in my current account but since I do have the ability to spend money without realising I phoned up the bank and got them to set up an ISA for me to save up in. It all went fine and I moved most of my money into my ISA and left about £130 in my current account for Christmas shopping and anything else I needed to buy.
All going fine until today. I was ordering a bit of Christmas shopping off the Tesco Direct site (which is a rant in itself, why can’t they put that stuff in the store too?) and you have to do a verification thing if you’re using a Visa card, but over the last few days my mum and Granddad had both had to ring up the bank to get through it, so I wasn’t overly surprised when it wouldn’t accept me either, although slightly annoyed. So I rang up the bank again and told them I was having problems with it and the lady on the phone took my details and then told me I had 69p in my bank account. Now, I’ve spent around £30 since I made my ISA, and for once, I’m certain I haven’t spent any more without realising, so naturally I was a bit confused and she went through my last months transactions and there was nothing weird, but I just told her I’d go and check myself online and try and figure it out and then call back.
I tootled off to the internet banking page and logged in, only to get stumped by the “Memorable Information” section. Apparently I hadn’t made it memorable enough. So then I went through and made up a new one which I should remember. And then it told me to ring them up to verify it. So I rang them up again and finally got through.
Sure enough, my current account had 69p in it, and my ISA had all the money I’d transferred in. I went to check my statement for my current account to find that when I’d set up my ISA two weeks ago, the man setting it up had told me I had £100 more than I really did in my account, so instead of leaving myself £130 for Christmas shopping, I only had £30 left. Now, I know I only had 6 presents to buy this year, but £30 really isn’t enough, especially since I’ve already spent it all.
So now I have to buy my two last presents on the £40 Mum owes me, and hope all my extended family just give me money for Christmas. I do realise I could take money out of my ISA, but at the minute I can just about afford either the Fringe or T in the Park (thank god camping won’t cost much) so I don’t want to be making the fund smaller already.
I have quite a lot to blog about at the minute, but no time to do it. Hopefully I’ll be able to catch up at the weekend. I always get stupidly busy right before the holidays.
