Paying Stupid Tax

Here’s a quick guide on how to spend heaps of money unnecessarily, it’s easy if you try.

1. Don’t keep your passport and birth certificate in a secure, easy to remember location.
2. Move house over a year ago & don’t unpack all your clutter from the boxes in the spare room
3. Realise you’re going overseas in under 4 weeks and try to locate your passport.
4. Turn your entire apartment upside down with no luck.
5. Realise you can’t find your birth certificate to apply for a new passport.
6. 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.
7. Book in appointment at Post Office for passport interview.
8. Complete passport application, including getting new passport photos Stupid tax of $9 as my existing passport still has two and half years on it.
9. 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).
10. 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.

Subscribe in a reader or Subscribe via email

Stupid Woman Rant

I’m sorry in advance for my tirade, but this story makes my blood boil, but I’m not on the side of the ‘full-time homemaker’. I’m not anti stay at home mums, or mums, or full time homemakers, I’m anti these two particular women for being so stupid and making all women look ridiculous by association.

“I couldn't believe it. It was like being back in the '50s. “

Honey, you don’t have a job, that’s why you didn't get the phone contract. You have no proof of income, as your husband is paying the bills (yes, even if you are the one who physically pays them), so what did you expect the poor rep in the store to do?

"Being a mum is a full-time job and it's a very hard job - the hardest job you can have - because if you get it wrong, the ramifications for everyone are enormous," Ms Fair said.

Being a full time Mum is hard, blah blah blah we all know that, but it doesn't demonstrate any financial capacity to pay off a 24mth phone contract if you have no income.

As for you Ms. Eva Cox of the Women's Electoral Lobby, the company should not be ashamed. Calling for a boycott of Vodafone is ridiculous.

To give you some perspective on why this has made me so mad, I don't work for Vodafone, in fact I work for a competitor.

We have to do Trade Practices Act - Consumer Protection compliance training every single year (even those in non customer facing roles) specifically to ensure we do not sell/develop/market dodgy products to customers or make them sign up for things they couldn’t reasonably be expected to understand (selling to persons who are mentally disabled, or deliberately misleading customers with Marketing offers, or not ensuring customers capacity to pay at point of sale).

It’s just as likely that we’d see this same woman on ACA or Today Tonight wailing we had sold her a phone and we’re the big meanies because we’re expecting her to actually pay her bills and she’s just a stay at home Mum.

You know you've seen those stories before.

As an independent woman this sort of thing infuriates me, the sense of righteous indignation for something that is completely unreasonable is what sends us back to the ‘50s, not Vodafone.

Subscribe in a reader or Subscribe via email