Only had a couple of "small fuck-ups"
When I was a student back in Australia, they had this thing call Austudy (not sure if they have it anymore). Basically if your family was poor enough, the government would give you an allowance for you to be able to attend school etc. It was some sort of sliding scale based on assets & income of your parents.

Being in the section of middle class closer to the poor side, my Mum obviously had this organised as soon as I was eligible.

After the first year, they sent us a letter to say they had "changed the rules" regarding the sliding scale. Oh and it was backdated, you owe us $1500. Fine we said, sign us up for it next year, and take the $1500 from that.

So all was well and dandy for another year. Then we got another letter, saying they had "changed the rules" again. This time it was something like $2000 that we owed them.

Mum told them where to go, and she organised to pay it off. At the rate of $10 a fortnight. Three or so years later it was finally paid off. Our little "fuck you" to the man.

Other one was from a loan I had for my 2nd-hand clunker I bought. It was only a small loan, something like $6k AUD. I set up an automatic payment on a Thursday morning every fortnight for the payment, as I'd deposit my pay cheque into the account the day before every fortnight.

This worked out well, but being the spender I am, I would usually have an empty account by the end of the fortnight. Then the company I worked for changed their pay date to a Thursday, and I forgot to change the automatic payment. As my statements were quarterly, and I am naturally daft, I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary until reading through my next statement, which detailed how about 40% of my pay was going towards the bank charges for failed direct debits.

Apologies for length and the funny smell.
(plowna, Sat 25 Nov 2006, 11:45, Reply)