Here’s a quick guide on how to spend heaps of money unnecessarily, it’s easy if you try.
- Don’t keep your passport and birth certificate in a secure, easy to remember location.
- Move house over a year ago & don’t unpack all your clutter from the boxes in the spare room
- Realise you’re going overseas in under 4 weeks and try to locate your passport.
- Turn your entire apartment upside down with no luck.
- Realise you can’t find your birth certificate to apply for a new passport.
- Apply for a new copy of your birth certificate, which requires working from home so you can go into the NSW Registry of Births Deaths & Marriages in person, and get a same day certificate processed. Stupid tax of $63, the cost of an urgent issue of certificate as I needn't have paid this at all if I had put it somewhere safe. Oh and don’t forget the Stupid tax of $13 for parking in the city.
- Book in appointment at Post Office for passport interview.
- Complete passport application, including getting new passport photos Stupid tax of $9 as my existing passport still has two and half years on it.
- Submit passport application. Stupid tax of $208 for the passport itself, and Stupid tax of $78 for priority processing (sent out within two business days + mailing time).
- Berate yourself for days on end for being so careless = priceless.
Total Stupid Tax: A$371, or approx 178 GBP.
I've taken the money out of my Trip fund. It’s not an emergency; it’s my own stuff up. Grrrr.
